


The Durhel Free Agents 1 - Touched by Chaos

by WitcherOfTheWoods



Series: The Durhel Free Agents [1]
Category: Dungeons & Dragons (Roleplaying Game), Dungeons & Dragons - All Media Types, Forgotten Realms, Pathfinder (Roleplaying Game), The Legend of Drizzt Series - R. A. Salvatore
Genre: Action, Action/Adventure, Alcohol, Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Dungeons & Dragons, Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Badass, Blood, Blood and Injury, Blood and Violence, Bonding, Dark, Dark Fantasy, Death, Developing Friendships, Developing Relationship, Dungeons & Dragons 5th Edition, Dungeons & Dragons References, Explicit Language, Explicit Sexual Content, Family, Family Bonding, Fantasy, Friendship, Gen, Gore, High Fantasy, Humor, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Inspired by Dungeons & Dragons, Mental Health Issues, Mythical Beings & Creatures, No Dungeons & Dragons Knowledge Required, Original Character(s), Physical Disability, References to Depression, Science Fiction & Fantasy, Sexual Content, Swords & Sorcery, Violence
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-07-08
Updated: 2020-11-19
Packaged: 2021-03-04 21:41:16
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 14
Words: 52,439
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25133308
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WitcherOfTheWoods/pseuds/WitcherOfTheWoods
Summary: Fandír normally sees few hostile creatures, yet a slew suddenly appears from the neighboring forest. As if that were not strange enough, everything in the area is acting bizarrely. Nymphs are being social, a manticore is napping in the shade of the city walls, and an ogre is taking regular baths. The half-elf Landelth is hired by the city to find the forest's guardian and discover what has caused this change. However he feels that he cannot do it alone and the city guard is entirely occupied with current events. Thus Hanthir and Sygren join the expedition, eager to make a place for themselves in Fandír, and Pehril accompanies them at the behest of his university instructor. Yet one of the main cast is missing. When will she make her debut?
Series: The Durhel Free Agents [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1820548
Kudos: 9





	1. The First Four

**Author's Note:**

> Hey there! Before you go further, know that this series will at points include graphic violence, sexual content, toxic relationships, racism, sexism, death, disabilities, and depictions of mental health including depression and addiction. If that is not for you for any reason, then you probably shouldn't read this.
> 
> Anyhow, this is the first entry in my serialized fan fic based on Dungeons & Dragons! Though I take some cues from the Forgotten Realms etc., these are all original characters living in an original world. This is only really a "fan fic" in that I am using a lot of the monsters, lore, religion, and magic from D&D. I'm just tweaking it.
> 
> I would LOVE constructive feedback if you're willing to leave comments! Though I wrote this for my own amusement, I can improve and learn from any writing I do and all critiques that I receive!
> 
> A special thanks to John C. "Wildbow" McCrae for his fantastic web series "Worm," which inspired me to start my own serialized story. He has no idea that I exist, but that's fine. If you haven't checked out his Parahumans series, absolutely do so! I think he's getting a publishing deal too, now that I think about it... 
> 
> Just a quick note: This is my first time using AO3, so I'm probably getting some stuff wrong with the interface, tagging, or any number of other things. Please tell me if there is an issue! Also, I have no idea how to include the world map, so I'll look into that! It's not pertinent for the moment, however, so don't worry.
> 
> Anyhow, hope you enjoy the first couple of entries in the Touched by Chaos story arc!

Landelth nearly spilled the last of his reagent when someone hammered against his door. Taking a steadying breath and carefully setting the vial of crystals on the bench, he called out “Just a minute!” He took another breath, huffing it out as he forced his hands to still again before picking the vial back up. _Shouldn’t be trying to eyeball it anyhow_ , he thought as he slipped a small spoon through the narrow neck to retrieve a few smoky, opaque grains of crystal. He tipped the reagent into the glass beaker he had set above a burner and quickly stirred with a length of glass, helping to dissolve and mix the crystals with the beaker’s contents before wiping the glass on a stained, singed rag and stepping away from his little “lab.”

Landelth doubted he needed to check through his door’s peephole for who was outside, but he pulled his goggles onto his forehead and did it anyway, largely out of habit. He unbolted the door, twisted the lock free, lifted the latch, and pulled the slab of solid oak open. “Afternoon, Constable,” he said, squinting his blue eyes against the late summer sun. “You’re always so enthusiastic when knocking on my door.” He glanced at the door and was glad to see that somehow the constable had not left any new scratches with his studded gloves. “Are you this excited to see everyone you visit?”

The constable either did not take the hint or pretended not to notice it. “Afternoon to you too. Mind coming to the garrison with me for a while? We’ve a bit of a problem.”

“Figured as much.” _Not like you ever stop by for anything else_. “Thing is, I’ve got a bit of a commitment here as well,” Landelth jerked his thumb over his shoulder at the workbench. “Can’t leave it alone or it’ll get ruined and it’s another hour or so until it’s done.”

The constable peered past Landelth’s shoulder and taking a cautious sniff of the room. “Seems pretty well ruined as it is.”

“It’s not. Promise.”

“Then why is it sparking and hissing?”

“Just working out the impurities in the solution. That being said, I do need to get back to it soon. Come inside and tell me what’s on your mind?” He opened the door wider and gestured a welcome. “Just take your boots off or wipe them down first. Might as well make yourself comfortable while you’re here and I’d prefer not to have horse shit on my floor.”

“Can’t imagine it’d make any difference for the smell,” the constable said, wrinkling his nose. Still, he peeled off his short boots and left them by the threshold as Landelth fetched a fan. “What’re you making, anyhow?”

“Either a paralytic or a numbing balm. A few people have been complaining about shingles. Haven’t decided which yet. Maybe some of both? Can apportion some out for each once the initial brewing is done.”

“What’s in it?” he continued to probe, the sparse plates of his armor softly scraping against the leather and wool beneath.

“Mostly basilisk venom, some verbena, alvanine, and a couple other things.”

“Gods, when did you kill a basilisk?” The constable walked over to peer at the beaker, though Landelth gently held him back with an outstretched arm, tapping on his goggles to illustrate why. 

“I didn’t. Never actually seen one, which I’m _just_ fine with, but my supplier came into some of this through a friend of his. Figured I could use it.” He glanced at the spitting substance as droplets settled onto the wooden table. Luckily, this substance didn’t add to the various pockmarks. “Got bored of making the usual salves and anti-toxins. Thought I’d try something new, since I had the recipe anyhow.” _Also need something to keep me distracted from my mood_ , he thought. _As ever_.

“Fair enough.” The constable pulled over the one other chair in the room and sat down with a sigh. He was an older man than Landelth, with lines already creased beneath his curly brown beard, but not an old man by any means. Still, he sometimes acted like he was. He had even asked Landelth to make him something for joint pain, though such remedies were outside of Landelth’s repertoire anyhow.

“So how can I help you?” Landelth asked, as he organized and packed away some of his ingredients and tools. “Or is it the garrison that I’ll be helping?”

“This can’t be a social call?” Landelth cast a wry look at the man. The constable rolled his eyes, huffing out a chuckle through the thick fur he called facial hair. “Fair enough. Put simply, we’ve got a problem with some nasties coming from the forest.”

“What kind and how many?”

“All kinds, I guess, and a fair number. One farming family reported seeing a griffon just yesterday.”

“Griffons are normal enough. I could probably kill it for you, sure, but that doesn’t seem like something the garrison couldn’t handle.”

“Think you’re underestimating how mean those things can be,” he said, though Landelth did his best not to cock an eyebrow at him, “but that’s not the point.” He shifted in his seat, resting his elbows on his knees. “I’m not saying this right. A griffon may be the least of our worries.” He furrowed his brows. “Umm… How to put this… We’ve got a nymph acting like she’s drunk and waving at folks, a fatted gulon just presented itself to a couple of hunters, and a wild boar tackled a small boy to the ground just to lick him like a besotted puppy.” Landelth raised his eyebrows in shock at all of this. “That’s ignoring the manticore napping beneath the city walls, the pair of trolls living together and rutting like rabbits by the quarry, and the ogre using our river as a bath. Tell me, you ever heard of an ogre bathing?” Landelth shook his head. “Me neither. Now, mind you, far as anyone can tell, all of these things came from the forest.”

Landelth puffed out his cheeks as he exhaled. “A troll’s a bit above my usual pay grade, not to mention the manticore.”

The constable gave out a mirthless laugh. “You and me both.”

“I mean, I’m not sure I can handle even one troll by myself, much less two.” Landelth grimaced as he finished tending the now simmering mixture. “Sorry, but this is a bit too much to ask.”

“Good thing I’m not asking it of you then. Hells, we can take care of the manticore ourselves. The boys are hauling a boulder up the wall now to drop on the fucker.” He scratched the edge of his beard. “What I—what _we_ —want from you is to figure out why everything’s acting funny. That nymph, for one, is starting to give passersby some ideas they really shouldn’t have. Whoever heard of a nymph even showing herself to folk this close to a town? It’s right strange.” Almost as an afterthought he added “Oh, and figure out how the less pretty creatures got through the forest. They’re not supposed to do that.”

Landelth stifled his sarcasm, though still made a face. “So you want me to go and check in on Sharidin.” Part of the reason that the city of Fandír had been founded at the edge of the forest was that the forest was Sharidin’s domain and he made a point of making vicious creatures feel unwelcome. Even bandits and their ilk found it hard to live there.

“More or less. See if he knows what’s happening.” 

“Sharidin isn’t exactly gregarious,” Landelth pointed out. “He won’t want to be seen.”

“That’s why we’re sending someone who’s good with the woods.” The constable shrugged. “Even if he doesn’t want to talk to you, you’ve probably got the best chance out of us of sneaking up on him and forcing a chat.”

“By this point, I probably stink too much of the city for his tastes. He’ll bolt as soon as he catches a whiff of me.”

“You’ll figure it out.” The constable leaned back and pulled a wine skin from beneath his coat. “So, you interested?”

Landelth grimaced. “I’m interested, sure, but no guarantees. Not to mention that, if those monsters you mentioned came from the forest, that place could be pretty dangerous by now.”

“I understand and so does the count.” He held the wine skin out to Landelth who considered it for a moment, then politely declined. “He’s willing to pay one hundred Eltian gold pieces for you to figure out what’s happening and report it; two hundred if you actually resolve the issue and have proof that it’s all done with.”

Landelth’s eyebrows rose. “That’s a handsome sum,” he said, doing some rough mental math. “This really matters to him…” _I could live off of just figuring this out for about a month and a half, maybe longer, and still make money with alchemy and my usual hunts in the meanwhile. Not bad…_

The constable nodded. “It only started a couple of days ago or so, but that’s enough for worry. Can’t trade or travel through that forest if it’s crawling with things that want to eat you and it’s only a matter of time before a chirkin or something comes through and kills a family or a brufriet torches a farm. If a giant or worse decides it’s nice in Fandír this time of year, well… You get the picture.”

Landelth nodded. “Yeah. I get it. Just glad to see the count does too.” He pursed his lips. “Much as I hate to split the bounty, though, I could probably use some help. Someone to watch my back at least would be nice.”

“Not worried about them scaring away Sharidin?”

“I am, but I can manage them well enough. I’ll make expeditions by myself when I need to or something. As you said, I’d figure it out.”

The constable took another pull from the skin before shoving the stopper back in. “Can’t give you any of my men in good conscience, not when we’ve got a pair of trolls to hunt after this manticore, but there are a couple of men in town. Said they’re looking for work, maybe looking to put down roots too. Want to help the city and the garrison they said, if they can. Might be a good chance for them to show their worth and you can judge their character for me while you’re out in the wilds.”

Landelth grimaced. “Uh, not sure how I feel about having strangers at my back. Can’t you give me Aldrin? Or Then, maybe? Hells, I’ll even take Kirk if that’s what you’ll give me.”

“Sorry, but we’ll need what we can get. Ogres are tough enough, but I want to put as many arrows and bolts into those trolls as I can before they try to meet us head on when we hunt them.” 

“Can’t you spare just one of them? Seriously, I’d rather work with an asshole I know, rather than a complete stranger.”

“I know, and I can respect that.” The constable put the wine skin away and rubbed his knees. “Listen, how about I talk to the count for you. See if I can’t get him to up the reward some. Maybe an extra ten or twenty gold for each person you bring along? That maybe change your mind?”

Landelth was not necessarily doing this for the money in the first place, but if the constable was willing to negotiate a better price on his behalf, he was not going to say “no.” “That still seems a little risky… You know anything about these men you want me to work with?”

“One of them claims to be a former soldier; says he left his lord’s service without any ill will. Don’t get the feeling he’s a deserter. He’s a half-elf like you, actually! Kind of looks like you too, beyond the obvious, that is,” he hurried to add. Landelth kept his expression blank. Hearing himself compared to other half-elves always brought a squall of conflicting emotions. “The other one, well, I can’t right place what he is, but he was working as a healer somewhere before this. Looks pretty sturdy, if you ask me, if a bit round. Carries a war hammer.”

That caught Landelth’s ear. “A healer could be useful… You sure you don’t want him to hang around here in case something goes wrong with the trolls or ogre?”

“Our own priests and physicians should be able to patch us up just fine if anything goes amiss.” Seeing that he had Landelth’s interest, the constable stood, his chair scraping against the plank floor. “Come. I’ll show you where the two strangers are staying.”

* * *

Hanthir watched the city’s constable step through the inn door followed by a half-elf much like himself. And by “much like himself,” he thought that it was like looking into a warped mirror. The person’s hair was the same dirty blond, albeit a little more red and thicker, and he had a similar face except for a slightly stronger jaw and narrower cheeks. This newcomer even wore their hair tied back in much the same way. Aside from the stranger having even paler skin than Hanthir, the only marked difference between them was that, where Hanthir’s eyes were warm and brown like varnished chestnut, this newcomer’s were faintly blue like the ocean on an overcast day or freshly polished steel. His expression was about as unyielding as well, as he surveyed the two of them. The constable, on the other hand, looked much as he had when Hanthir and Sygren had last seen him two days prior, save for a different shirt.

“Hello, Constable! Come to join us for lunch?” Hanthir gestured to an open stool and Sygren scooted his own aside to make room. “The owner’s wife is about to bring out some lamb.”

The Constable grimaced. “‘Fraid not. I need to be back on the walls as soon as I can. This is just business.”

Sygren looked at the empty stool and the Constable as if they had offended each other, his onyx face crinkled in incredulity. “So that means you can’t take a seat?”

The Constable’s expression did not change, though he pulled up a second stool for his companion and sat himself at the table. The stranger half-elf followed suit, still watching Hanthir and Sygren. “You two still interested in making a place for yourselves in Fandír?”

Hanthir raised his eyebrows at Sygren who returned the expression. “Yeah, sure!”

Sygren leaned forward, setting his arms on the table and leaning his dense body into it. The shoddy carpentry creaked as his weight settled and Hanthir wondered if something was going to split. “Does that mean you found a job for us?” Sygren asked.

“Aye. Landelth, these men are Hanthir and Sygren.” The constable nodded his head at the half-elf. “Landelth here needs someone to watch his back while he goes into the forest. Things have gotten a sight more dangerous in the last few days, so this isn’t going to be an easy escort. If you two’ve kept your ears to the ground, you might’ve heard about the monsters coming around.” 

Hanthir did not want to admit that this was the first he had heard of it, but Sygren saved him the admission. “Right. Heard about the stray harpy yesterday. Why does he need an escort, though?” he asked. “There something bigger in the forest that needs to be taken care of?”

Over the next few minutes, the constable filled them in on the details while Hanthir and Sygren’s lunch appeared. The constable cast longing glances at the lamb shanks in their gravy and onion broth all the while. Hanthir even caught a glimmer of lust in Landelth’s eye, though the stranger stayed quiet during the explanation.

“It’s going in the river every day?” Hanthir asked, skeptical. “Since when do ogres take baths?”

“That’s what everyone wants to know, yes,” the constable said, “but the water pollution he’s causing might be the least of our worries.”

“How do you know it’s a ‘he?’” Hanthir asked.

“Some nearby farmers saw it,” the constable said offhandidly. “Easy enough to tell when the thing strips to nothing before jumping in the water every day.”

“Seems simple enough, though,” Sygren said, shrugging. “When do you think you’ll be ready to leave?” he asked Landelth.

Landelth, who had been studying them throughout the conversation, finally opened his mouth. “I would just want to put a few things together in my house first.” His voice was a steady, mildly pitched baritone with a slight reverberation. Not a voice for women to swoon over, but smooth and tuneful. Hanthir wondered for a moment how the man would sound while singing. “We might be out there for a few days, so pack for a week, just in case.”

“Oof.” Sygren put down his knife and fork next to his demolished meal. “We might need a couple of hours to buy supplies and take care of everything else. We’re kind of low on travel rations.”

“We are?” Hanthir asked, eyebrows raised.

Sygren looked at him like Hanthir had just said that he could fly. “Mate, yes! We ate almost all of it! Hells, you took almost all of the jerky for yourself and left me with only nuts. All we’ve got left are some stale biscuits.”

“Oh.” Hanthir looked away, pressing his lips as he tried not to laugh. “Whoops.”

“Yeah, you’re paying for the new stuff this time.”

“Yeah, okay, that’s fair.”

“Um, have you two done much traveling before?” Landelth cast a quick, dubious glance at the constable. “In the wilderness, that is?”

“Oh, yeah,” Hanthir said. “When I was in the army, anyway. Lots of that.”

“He means when you didn’t have a quartermaster or someone else telling you what to do, dumbass.” Sygren smacked him on the shoulder with the back of one of his thick hands. “And no, not really. We’ve mostly been going town to town.”

“Yeah,” Hanthir admitted. “We’d camp on the side of the road every now and then getting here, but that’s about it.”

Landelth turned back to the constable. “You sure you can’t lend me Kirk?”

The constable shrugged. “Take what you can get.”

Landelth sighed and shrugged in turn. “Okay, just in case, you two should pack for a week and a half of camping. Just in case.”

“What?” Sygren scrunched his face up. “Why even longer?”

“Because you guys aren’t really experienced and if we get stranded or if you make too much noise and scare away Sharidin, then this is going to take a lot longer.”

“Yeah, about that,” Hanthir cut in. “Who or what is Sharidin, anyhow? You’ve mentioned him a few times.”

“He’s our local guardian,” the constable said. “No one really knows how old he is, just that he’s been here since before the city was even a village. Keeps the forest safe and, by being neighbors, keeps us safe for the most part too. Means we only have to really watch for threats coming from the ocean and the hills.”

“Yeah, but _what_ is he?”

“Unicorn-pegasus mix,” the constable stated without batting an eye. “Some call him a pegacorn, but that just sounds like a bad sex joke, if you ask me.”

Sygren however was taken aback. “A unicorn? You’re kidding me, right?”

“Why not a unicus?” Hanthir asked. The others stopped and looked at him. “You know, a unicorn-pegasus? Doesn’t sound as weird as ‘pegacorn,’ right? Or maybe a unisus? A Ugisus?”

“Hanthir,” Sygren said, “shut up.” He turned back to the constable and other half-elf as Hanthir grinned and pretended not to feel a spike of irritation. “Just double checking, but are you joking?”

“No, why?”

“I mean, we’re not exactly bad guys, I don’t think, but we’re not really ‘pure of heart’ either. Especially not this doofus, here,” he nodded at Hanthir. “And we’re a pretty far sight from being maidens.” He scratched his curly beard as if to illustrate.

Landelth snorted. “Yeah, that stuff’s all crap. Just myths. Finding a unicorn is much like finding any other creature. Find what it likes, where it lives, and that’s half of it right there. They’re just shy and can sense emotions. That whole ‘pure of heart’ thing is just what people say to make themselves feel special when they run across one. Only real problem is that unicorns can conceal themselves if they’ve lived in that forest for long enough. So can anything else that lives in the forest or serves them.”

“You seen this… unicorn? Pegasus?” Sygren seemed to be reeling slightly from this. “I’m not going to call it a pegacorn.”

“Please don’t,” the constable agreed.

“Whatever it is, you seen it yourself?”

“In passing,” Landelth said, shrugging. “Never really went looking for him. Just caught a glimpse while hunting and looking for ingredients. Waved, but he didn’t pay me any mind and vanished. Kind of catty, I guess. Or just shy.”

“Well, that’s a start,” Sygren said. “If he doesn’t know what’s going on with the monsters, though, what do you plan to do? Just have us wander the forest until we figure something out?”

“Sharidin is lord of the forest,” Landelth said, as if he were stating the obvious. “He knows everything that’s happening in his domain.”

“If he did, though, would this be happening?”

Landelth opened his mouth then shut it. “Okay, that’s a fair point. Still, chances are he knows something. Maybe he doesn’t understand it either, though. Big difference between knowing that something is happening and _why_ it’s happening.”

“And if he doesn’t know? We just walk around until we figure it out?”

“I’m sure there will be clues, but if it’s magical in nature…” Landelth’s lips pressed together in embarrassment. “Well, I’m decently familiar with magic and all that, but I’ve never really studied it, so specifics are a bit lost on me.”

“Well, I don’t know about you, but I don’t want to make a trip all the way out there, find out we don’t understand enough, and then have to come back empty handed to pick up a book or something.” 

Landelth closed his eyes, as if pained, before leaning back and looking at the constable again. “Any chance we can get someone from the university to come along?”

The constable shrugged. “Well, maybe, if you’re willing to split the fee even further.”

“Wait, fee?” Hanthir asked. “We’re getting paid for this?!”

The constable gave him a blank look. “Well, yes. Don’t get me wrong, your services will go a long way toward getting goodwill with the count and the city as a whole, but I wouldn’t ask you to risk your necks without some compensation.”

“Oh, great! How much are we talking?”

“I think I could get you fifteen gold each. Still need to work out the details with the count.”  
“Wait, fifteen?” Sygren smirked. “That’s nothing. I can make that much in a day healing people if I decided to be really scummy about it.”

The constable shrugged. “As I said, this is largely about you showing that you’re willing to give yourself to this city. Consider it a trial run.”

“Still need to eat after this. The supplies by themselves might cost half that much. Make it forty gold each and it’s a deal.”

The constable huffed out a sigh, glancing at Landelth. “I can probably get you twenty each. Mind you, this is considering the extra person we’ll be taking on.”

“‘Probably’ isn’t exactly reassuring, though I think we can take thirty instead.”

The constable’s expression hardened. “How badly do you think you need their help, Landelth?”

He shrugged. “Not that badly.” 

“Twenty gold each and I’ll talk to the count about giving you the right to purchase or rent property in his domain,” he finally said. “Otherwise, it looks like you really aren’t that eager to earn a home for yourselves here and will have to find another way.”

“I mean,” Hanthir started, “I was willing to just sign up for the garrison—” He stopped as Sygren kicked him from under the table.

“That works.” Sygren put out his hand and the constable shook it. The constable was a fair sized man, but Sygren’s hand nearly wrapped around his. “Mind if we come along to find a scholar?” he asked, settling back into his chair, much to the table’s relief as is creaked and bent back into place.

Landelth shook his head. “If you’re a part of this, then I figure you have as much right to an opinion as I do. Though I will say I know these lands better than either of you, so keep that in mind.”

“Oh yeah,” Hanthir said, nodding. “Makes sense. You get the final say.”

Landelth exchanged a look with the constable. “Well, I guess we’ve got a deal.”

* * *

Pehril was taking notes from _Transmutation and Time_ by Solchiv Seulovsky when the head scholar for his group opened the door without knocking. “This one here,” he said, speaking to the four men he lead into the small study. “He’s probably your best candidate.” 

Pehril put down his quill and turned to examine the newcomers. One was a middle aged, bearded man with the city guard’s patch and an extra golden bar printed across it sewn onto his breast. Two of the others, either elves or half-elves, looked to be brothers, with similar hair, faces, and standing at almost exactly the same height, though one showed a bit more muscle than the other and the second walked around with a small smile on his lips. Maybe he had just heard a joke? The last man, however, gave Pehril pause. He had onyx-black skin, almost like some dark elves Pehril had heard about, and was about as tall as an average elf, but was built far thicker, with broad shoulders and a thick paunch that bordered on fat. Furthermore, he lacked pointed ears and wore about an inch of silvery-white beard that glittered in the light coming through the window, as did his curling hair. Even though he was wearing a long white and grey robe with faint embroidery over his chest, he also had a heavy-headed war hammer and shield strapped across his back.

Upon further inspection of the others, he noticed that they were all armed in some way. The guardsman made enough sense, having a mace and cudgel at his hip and dressed in half-plate, but the others? One of the half-elves had a round shield on his back plus a dagger and sturdy short sword on opposite hips, while the other wore longer swords similarly, belted over a set of plate covering his torso along with a shirt sewn with steel rings and leather armor layered over his arms and shins. If it were not for how clean they all appeared, that they were armed in the presence of the city guard, and were admitted by Master Thollon, Pehril might have assumed that they were brigands. _Still not ruling out the possibility…_

“Master Pehril is versed in nearly every aspect of the arcane and has quite a bit of practical knowledge as well,” Master Thollon continued, his wrinkled face apparently glowing as he presented Pehril. “He should suit your needs quite nicely.”

“He know anything about magical creatures and magic found in nature?” the armored half-elf asked.

“Oh, I am sure he does. Don’t you, Master Pehril?”

Pehril blinked. “Um, yes, though it’s not really my specialty.”

“He has quite the mind and I am sure that he could address any perplexity that you set before him.”

“And you said he has practical knowledge?” the black-skinned man asked. Upon closer inspection, his skin seemed stiff, almost rigid, despite creasing and moving much as anyone else’s.

“Oh yes. His studies and general curiosity have led him to acquiring a number of spells and techniques that would prove useful in an excursion.”

Pehril was unaccustomed to being on display and wanted to shrink away. “Uh, I’m sorry,” Perhil cut in, “but what’s this about?”

Master Thollon turned his greying head back to Pehril briefly. “Oh, we are discussing the possibility of you assisting the local populace with a mission of sorts. You are to go into the forest with these men and determine the source of a recent blight of monsters and strange animal behavior.”

“Uh, and do I get any say in this?” Pehril did not like to be impolite, especially not to his superiors, but Master Thollon made this “possibility” sound like a forgone conclusion already.

Master Thollon blinked, as if the thought had not occurred to him. “Well, of course you do! Fandír University’s masters directed these men to me and I had simply thought that, out of the scholars and mages in our own group, you might prove the most useful. You could learn something interesting too! I thought that you would be intrigued.”

“I’m… not sure that I am,” Pehril cautiously replied. “I don’t really deal with monsters or anything like that. And you want me to go into the forest with them when there are more monsters than usual? That sounds like it might be a bit much for me.”

“Oh, I’m sure that it’s not! And don’t worry about your studies and contribution to the research endeavor with us! The constable here has agreed to pay for your services to compensate for the time you will be away.”

“Sir, that’s… that’s not the problem.” Pehril took a breath, trying to find the right words that would not make him sound as irritated as he was or like a coward. “I’ve never gone on an expedition or anything. All of my work is based in labs and theories. I don’t think I’m exactly suited for monster slaying.”

“Oh, no no no! This is not about monster slaying, Master Pehril,” Master Thollon corrected with a soft smile. “And besides, there is a first time for everything!” He turned back to the men before Pehril could respond. “How long does he have to prepare?”

“Uh, Master Scholar,” the constable began, “it seems to me he’s none too willing for what we’ve got in mind.”

Master Thollon chuckled and waved as if he smelled rotting garlic. “Nonsense! He has much to gain from this expedition and we all may learn something here.”

“Master,” Pehril said, clenching his hands in his lap, “I really do not think I am qualified for this.”

Master Thollon finally seemed to hear him and paused. “Gentlemen,” he finally said, “would you please give me a minute to speak with Master Pehril?” The whole group of them cast dubious glances between both Pehril and Thollon, though they agreed and stepped into the hall, closing the door behind them. When they were gone, Master Thollon turned to Pehril with a paternal smile. “So, doubting ourselves, are we?”

Pehril looked to the side, finding something fascinating to examine in the stone wall. “Well, yes, Master. This seems rather _dangerous_. Wouldn’t Master Bradford be more suited for this? He’s been on expeditions and has dealt with bandits and ghosts before.”

Master Thollon waved his hand. “Pah! Bradford is an archeologist, not a naturalist. Besides, he’s full of hot air. I would not be in the least surprised if he had simply sat on the sidelines while others dealt with whatever threats his team faced.”

“That’s still more than I’ve ever done. Also, I’m not a naturalist either, Master.”

“Well, we don’t have any naturalists in our group and the naturalists at this university are all old men or lack any real means of defending themselves. They’re all about thinking and theories and don’t know anything they can use at the drop of a hat.”

Pehril decided not to mention that most of his spells were more for convenience than combat. “What about you, though, Master? You are more experienced than I am and you taught me half of the spells I know that can be used in a fight.” He also decided not to mention that he had only wanted to learn them in order to better study their properties, rather than to kill dragons.

Master Thollon blew a rather undignified raspberry. “I am getting too old for expeditions. And besides, I need to oversee the research we are doing here! The grant was given to me, after all. If the chancellors back home hear that I went off on a lark and left you all to your own devices, then they would accuse me of misappropriation of funds!”

_Doesn’t that apply to me too, though?_ Pehril wondered. _Even if my time is compensated, this is still something that the university did not approve me to do_. “But why send me at all? Why do we care? I mean, yes, there are monsters and that could be problematic for this city, but that seems like something they can resolve on their own. If anything, we should teleport home if it’s dangerous here.”

“Maybe, yes, but think in these terms: If we contribute our help, it will get the count’s attention, maybe secure us a better relationship with him.” Pehril could read between the lines how a “better relationship” also meant future business for the university. “Second, if we take a job that the Fandír scholars are unwilling to fulfill, it would be quite a feather in our university’s cap as well as yours. Third, and this is the best part, they are talking about going to find a unicorn-pegasus hybrid!” Thollon clapped his hands together as his rheumy eyes squinted in glee. “Imagine that! A unicorn is rare enough and I think only one or two of our predecessors had opportunities to study them, but a hybrid? I did not even know that the two species could breed!”

Upon hearing that, Pehril would have admitted that his own curiosity was piqued. It must have shown on his face too, because he could see Master Thollon readying another avenue of attack. “That’s definitely interesting,” Pehril said before the master could resume, “but I am the only one in our group examining the transmutation aspects of our project. I can’t imagine us making much headway without working on my end of things.”

“Of course we could not, and you have been doing splendidly, but I can take over for you, at least for a time!” That Thollon had the time, at least, Pehril believed wholeheartedly. He often found himself wondering exactly how much work Master Thollon was doing while Pehril and the others worked anyhow. He was supposed to organize and combine their findings, but they had scarce findings to work with as it was. Largely, he had been flitting from one scholar to another, reviewing their work, nudging them in one direction or another that they were already going, while often adding unnecessary and sometimes useless contributions and opinions that Pehril and the others were too polite to point out. “This is an opportunity that would be criminal to ignore!”

Pehril grudgingly nodded his head. “Well, how much will they be paying?”

“They have promised twenty gold to compensate for the time you are gone.”

Pehril considered that. _An extra twenty gold never hurts. Would go a long way toward paying for my own research materials as well,_ he then admitted to himself. _And it’d be nice to use some for a trip back to see my family too._ He suppressed a sigh, seeing Thollon’s eager gaze drilling into him. “Are these men capable?”

“Oh, yes,” Thollon replied a little too quickly. "The constable seems to have full confidence in them. Otherwise, he would be sending his own men, I’m sure.”

_Either that or the constable doesn’t want to get his own men killed_ , Pehril thought. 

“You ought to be quite safe,” Thollon continued, oblivious or callous to Pehril’s troubled mien. “They also said that the one with the swords had seen this creature before. If he found it once before, I am sure that he can find it again! You could be back tomorrow night, for all we know!”

Pehril looked back down to his hands, studying them instead of the wall. He tried to think as he felt Master Thollon’s eyes trying to wriggle into his head. “Could you call them back in, please?” he quietly asked.

Master Thollon practically skipped to the door. “Come in! Come in! Yes, things are quite settled.”

_It’s not settled!,_ Pehril thought, trying not to glare at Thollon’s back. _I never said “yes.”_

“So, Master Pehril,” said the guardsman, “you will be joining these men after all?”

At least someone asks me what my thoughts are without entirely assuming… “Actually, I do have a couple more questions: Do we know the nature of whatever has caused this change?”

“What do you mean, exactly?” the armored elf asked.

“Well, do we know if the cause is magical? Mundane? Is it because some other creature or lack of food has driven these intruders to seek other lands? Is there some chemical affecting their minds and behavior? Is this enchantment magic, maybe?”

“Well, if we knew that,” drawled the black one, “we probably wouldn’t be trying to hire you.”

Pehril felt himself flush and hoped that the others would not notice through his natural coloring. “That’s… fair. Okay, do we know what kind of difficulties we might face? Do we know what natural or magical obstacles are out there or…” _I can’t believe I’m saying this._ “Or what kind of monsters we might find?”

The others looked to the guard and the armored elf. Perhaps he was another guardsman? Pehril saw no emblem. “As far as aggressive creatures go,” responded the elf, “we’ve already seen a boar, a manticore, two trolls, and an ogre, but that’s just near the city.”

“And the manticore’s only a red smear outside the wall now,” the guardsman said with evident satisfaction.

“Other than that, we won’t be able to stick to the main paths, not if we want to find Sharidin. He’s not likely to go near them.”

“Sharidin is the unicorn hybrid, I’m guessing?”

“Yeah. So aside from potential monsters, we’ll be moving through some rough terrain. Expect anything from fallen branches, hidden roots, and thorny vines to potholes, ditches, and small rivers. No canyons or anything we can’t cross on foot. It’ll still be fairly warm at night, though, so at least we won’t need to worry about freezing and can probably go without a fire if necessary, unless you have a…” he trailed off as he visibly searched for the appropriate term while trying not to stare at Pehril. “A particular need for the heat.”

Pehril felt himself flush again, though not with embarrassment this time. “I don’t,” he responded with a hard gaze and stiff tone.

The armored one shifted in place. “Okay. Good then. Other than that, just bring extra food in case we get stuck out there for a while. Plan for about a week and a half, though I’m guessing it will be half that time.” 

Pehril could not stop himself from casting an accusatory look at Master Thollon. _“Could be back tomorrow night?” Get bent, you ass._ “All right. Anything else I should know?”

“Well, are you inclined to violence, anger, or setting things on fire randomly?”

Pehril was taken aback. “Uh, no? Is there any reason I should be?”

The armored elf shook his head. “Just checking. Sharidin can sense emotions from a good distance. If he thinks you’re looking to kill something or steal or otherwise be a threat to him or the forest, then he’ll bolt and probably tell all of the nearby animals to get away too.”

“Uh, well, I’ve never been in a fight before and I had really hoped to postpone that… particular experience indefinitely,” again he glanced at Thollon, “and I haven’t killed anything more sentient than a crab, that I’m aware of so… I think I’m okay to come along?”

The elf (half-elf?) shrugged. “You’ll be fine.” The longer Pehril studied him, the more he vacillated between labeling the armored person and his brother as full elves or not.

Pehril looked at the group, taking in their weapons and how they were clearly expecting some sort of conflict. _I could always say “no,”_ he thought. Then he looked at Master Thollon, who had moved behind the visitors and whose expression during this conversation had changed from eager enthusiasm to strict scrutiny. The message was clear enough. _He’s my best shot at getting a full mastership_ , Pehril thought, glum. _Never going to get a better chance at earning his favor_. He clenched his jaw and, before he could convince himself not to, asked “When and where should I meet you?”


	2. The Bathing Ogre

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Landelth, Sygren, Hanthir, and Pehril have all met and agreed, some rather reluctantly, to hazard the woods and find Sharidin. Landelth doubts whether Pehril will actually come, the group learns more about each other, and they come upon a freak of nature: An ogre taking a bath.

Landelth was surprised to see Hanthir and Sygren already waiting for him at the western gate. He knew that he was a couple of minutes late, but he had expected the foreigners to be careless with time or get lost in town. The the light fog that had rolled in from the sea would not have made the more cramped neighborhoods any easier to navigate. _Then again, at least Hanthir used to be in an army_ , he considered. _Maybe some of that punctuality stuck_. Landelth waved as he approached. Sucking in a breath, a slapped a practiced and friendly smile onto his face and prepared to start a conversation.

“You two definitely look ready to go,” he observed, taking them in. Unlike yesterday, when they had been outfitted for wandering around a fairly safe city, Hanthir and Sygren had now nearly equipped themselves for a war. Hanthir had donned a set of hardened leather armor topped with a dark grey breastplate and plain vambraces in addition to his grey and black clothes. Sygren had pulled on a pair of engraved, lobstered gauntlets and a set of scale mail, each plate almost the size of Landelth’s palm. Atop his head, he also wore a silvery mask of some sort like an askew hat. Between the armaments over his traveling clothes, his hard, sleek skin, and bristly beard, Landelth thought that Sygren looked almost like a crustacean that someone had decided to play dress up with. Aside from that, Sygren had a thick leather strap across his chest which secured his heavy hammer and metallic shield to his back.

“Morning,” Landelth said, forcing himself to keep his expression open and inviting. No sense in making these people uneasy if he was going to be spending a week with them. _Might as well make friends_ , he reasoned. _Be less likely to stab me in the back and maybe they’ll let their guards down._

“Morning,” Hanthir mumbled, eyes still squinted and blinking away sleep.

Landelth peered behind them toward the gate. “You two seen the wizard yet?”

Hanthir shook his head. “Not too many people moving around here at the crack of dawn,” Sygren said. “You think he chickened out? Didn’t seem too keen on coming along to begin with.”

Landelth grimaced. “Yeah. I got the sense his master was pressuring him into it.” He huffed out a sigh. “Well, we have time, I suppose, but I’m not going to run all the way back to the university to double check, unless you two want to.” The strangers snorted in unison. “How about we wait another twenty minutes? Give him a chance to catch up.”

Not wanting things to become silent and uncomfortable, Landelth asked what had brought the two of them to Fandír in the first place. Sygren said that he and Hanthir had reunited almost five months back, when Hanthir was leaving his lord’s service. As they chatted and conversation shifted to where they had been before Fandír, Hanthir got a chance to wake up and started mentioning times the two of them had gotten into bad or just plain weird situations. For his own part, Landelth was content to stay quiet, evaluate his companions, and enjoy the show.

“Okay, yeah,” Sygren said during one, nodding in agreement, “but it’s _your_ fault that she was after us in the first place.”

Hanthir rolled his eyes. “Well, maybe, but I’d just met her in a tavern! How was I supposed to know that she was a demon worshipper?” 

“Uh, maybe by the ritual daggers and creepy drawings you saw when you went home with her?”

“Well, it’s obvious in hindsight, yeah.”

“What did you think all those paintings were?!”

“Interior design? I don’t know!”

Landelth grinned at their good-natured bickering and looked at the lightening sky that he could see above the city wall. He scanned the streets one more time and then sighed. “Well, guess he’s not coming.” The other two faltered in their conversation, looking past Landelth to double check the streets themselves. “Come on. We’ll get the guards to open the gate for us.” He walked to the smaller door set into the warded stone wall beside the gate, behind which he could hear voices, and knocked against the door. This one was similar to Landelth’s own: Solid oak and meant to keep out a herd of angry bulls. A pause in the conversation and a few seconds later, the barred peephole slid open.

“Oh! Landelth!” a voice connected to the revealed hazel eyes said. “‘bout time! We were wondering when you’d come by!” The small opening slid shut before Landelth could ask why he was expected. He heard a bar slide away and the three inches of steel-bound wood swung inward.

“Uh, did the constable tell you we were coming?”

“Constable?” the guard asked, frowning. “What’s he got to do with this? This one here said you’d be coming by, though.” Landelth looked past the guard and saw sat at a small table with one other guard a tall, lanky man with a thin face, no hair, and sapphire skin holding a cup of something in his long-fingered hands. “Rather rude of you all to keep him waiting nearly a half hour, if you ask me.”

Landelth blinked. “Master Pehril, how long have you been waiting in here for?”

Hanthir peered over Landelth’s shoulder and his eyebrows rose. “Oh shit! When did you get here?”

Pehril blinked, his large eyes magnified behind a pair of glasses. “Um, I’ve been here for nearly two hours now, I think. Got here a little before fourth bell.” He glanced to the drink in his hand. “I couldn’t get any sleep, so I thought I would come early and wait for you all.”

“Okay, that’s great, really appreciate it,” Landelth said, sincere, yet confused, “but why are you inside the gate house?”

“Well, this is where you said to meet,” Pehril said hesitantly, as if expecting a trick question. “‘At the western gate house,’ you said.”

“Um, yeah. ‘At,’ not ‘in.’” Landelth started chuckling, though mostly in embarrassment. “We’ve been waiting for you outside for nearly half an hour and you’ve been in here the whole time?”

Hanthir started laughing too while Sygren rolled his eyes and groaned. “Gods above…”

“Oh,” Pehril said, taken aback, the blue skin of his cheeks turning a dark purple as he flushed. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to keep you waiting. I was trying to be early.” 

“Hey, don’t worry about it!” Hanthir said, still chuckling.

“Really, this is as much my fault as anyone else’s,” Landelth asserted. “I should’ve thought to check with the guards first, seen if you’d already come by. Honestly, I’m just surprised they let you in.”

“He seemed to be getting cold out there,” one of the men grinned. “He was even bluer than he is now!” He laughed, as did Pehril, though Landelth noticed that Pehril’s smile seemed a bit forced.

“Well then,” Landelth ventured, “sorry to break this up, but if you’re ready, we can be on our way!”

Pehril nodded his bald head and Landelth noticed faint stripes on his skin that seemed to shift as shadows from the early morning light moved along his face. Rising, he stood a full foot taller than Landelth, even a few inches taller than Sygren, and almost had to stoop to avoid brushing his head on the ceiling beams. “Thank you for the drink, gentlemen. Perhaps I should return the favor once we get back!”

The one who laughed stood too and reached up to pat Pehril on his narrow shoulder. “That’d be right appreciated! Just lay off the puns next time, otherwise I’ll have to gut ya!” He laughed again and gently shoved Pehril forward. 

As the guards heaved the main gate’s oaken bar free and pulled one of the doors open, Landelth leaned in toward Pehril. “‘Puns?’”

Pehril shrunk in on himself a little, still leaving him a head taller than Landelth. “They were the only jokes I could think of.”

Landelth snickered. “Hey, puns are great! They’ve got a way of opening doors for you,” he said gesturing to the gate. Pehril paused for a second then groaned softly, rolling his eyes and giving maybe the first genuine, relaxed grin that Landelth had seen on him yet.

“That wasn’t even a good pun!”

“Hey, it’s early in the morning.” Landelth gave him a lopsided grin. “Give me a break.”

“Right!” the first guard said. “Off you go! And make sure to come back in one piece! I’m holding you to that drink!”

As the gates closed behind them, Pehril gave a bemused huff. “I don’t understand. Is that normal here?”

“Is what normal here?”

“Guards just chatting with people, especially strangers? Can’t think of many people much more strange than me coming through here.”

“You’d be surprised,” Landelth said. “It’s a port town, so we get all sorts from the ocean. Also, most of the guards are a good sort. They’re more likely to be suspicious of the dockworkers and sailors. They cause more brawls and are sometimes part of smuggling rings. Probably felt more relaxed since you’re clearly the scholarly type and didn’t seem too imposing.” As he said it, Landelth realized that the last part could have been construed as an insult. He did his best to keep his expression friendly and not register the slip up.

“How do you mean?”

Landelth did not want to be rude and point out Pehril’s blatant lack of muscle, his withdrawn demeanor, or how his clothes were unblemished by hard labor. “Well, you’ve got ink stains all over you, so that’s a start, you’ve got nicer clothes, and you don’t carry yourself like a thug or give people evil looks. That counts for a lot around here.” Landelth hesitated then added “Also, city has had some problems with guards abusing other races before. Long story short, it didn’t end well for anyone and the constable and the count have been more careful in who they recruit and how they use those men.” He paused then added. “They’re also a bit more strict with keeping them in line.” The fog was not so heavy outside of the city and the morning sun was already causing it to fade, revealing the road ahead and the shining grey specters of farms, fields, and the occasional house. Having a clear enough view and, seeing no hint of manticores, trolls, ogres, werebears, barghests, or any other nasties, Liendel waved them forward.

“Wait, what happened?” Hanthir asked as they set off.

Landelth shrugged. “Well, I’m not really sure on the specifics. This was before I came to Fandír and I’ve only been here for about two years. It’s honestly kind of a touchy subject with most people, but what I’ve gathered is that, for a long time, the guards weren’t much better than a common gang. They’d shake down people in the street and especially targeted anyone who wasn’t a human, dwarf, elf, or someone who could pull strings and get the guard in trouble.

“Those less fortunate people, if they lived here, were kept out of the main streets, only sold homes in slums or on the edge of town, and couldn’t hold public offices. For a long time, apparently it was kind of a seasonal expectation that there would be a riot or a lynching from one side or the other. Guards would rob or beat too many people and someone would kill a few of them and then there’d be a witch hunt in the streets. Or it would be the other way around and the minorities would form groups to hunt down and murder guards or politicians and merchants they didn’t like.”

“Holy crap,” Hanthir breathed. “And people actually chose to live here?” He let out a long breath. “Fuck. I can’t imagine being somewhere for long if I had to deal with stuff like that.”

“Not everyone has a choice about where they live,” Landelth said, trying not to sound condescending. “Some people are too poor to leave, some are in debt, and some creatures are actually tied to the land in some way.”

“So how did it finally stop?” Pehril asked, his face betraying some of the horror he felt.

“Well, to an extent, it didn’t.” Landelth’s lips squeeze into a bloodless line. “That idiocy still happens sometimes. But it’s a lot improved. The count’s father laid the foundation for a better city. Made friends among the local bureaucrats or forced them to obey one way or the other. Then made more jobs available to everyone, bought up lots of the housing and started bringing more kinds of people together in the same neighborhoods, and brought in new guards from the empire’s core that were more loyal to him or the state and who would enforce his version of the law, rather than what came before. Harder for the bad guards to hide when there were others among them who would turn them in.”

The nights were still fairly warm, but the fog and sea breezes had made this last night chilly and damp. Landelth tried to forget that the darkness of winter was only a few months away and instead enjoyed watching the mist vanish, revealing more of the land as they moved further from the shore and the sun burned the vapors. Already, Landelth could make out the rocky and sparsely wooded hills off to his left that protected the city’s south. Beyond that was giant country, but they knew not to come past the hills. _If it’s a clear day_ , Landelth considered, _we might even be able to see the mountains._

“Apparently, it got worse before it got better,” he resumed. “Some of the new guards were treated like foreigners, even if they were human, and one was killed. There was even more fighting for a while too, at least until the count started publicly punishing guards and minorities alike for crimes. I hear he was brutal, but he was probably as impartial as he could be without giving one side or the other too much leeway. His son then inherited a city that was getting better, starting to change, and was able to bring in other new guards, encouraged all thinking creatures to join the ranks, and found people from all walks to fill public offices. The hardest part for him was apparently getting the lesser nobles and the guilds to cooperate.”

“But things are better now,” Hanthir said. “Right?”

Landelth shrugged as he scanned the first of the fields as they approached. Even if the surrounding land was fairly open, he knew that plenty of deadly things could hide even among unripened wheat. “Like I said: Shitty things still happen. It’s just a lot better than it used to be. Considering how long-lived some of the townsfolk are, it’s not hard to believe what they tell me. If anyone would remember, it’s them, though their memories are all colored differently. But that also means that there are plenty of grudges left over, people who want revenge or justice, people who want things to go back to the way they were, and others who are just plain vicious. The count weeds them out where he can and the constable has done a lot for that too, but, well, it’s not something that gets fixed in just fifty years, or however long it’s been.”

“That’s both encouraging and terrifying at the same time,” Pehril observed. “How did the first count manage to hold onto power? He must’ve been making a ton of influential enemies.”

Landelth lifted his palms. “As I said, I’m not too good on the specifics. My local history is kind of shabby and not a lot of people want to talk about it and the people who do want to talk about it tend to twist things or blow them out of proportion. It’s hard to pick out what’s true and what’s crafted to make someone feel good about themselves.”

“To be fair, pretty much everyone does that,” Sygren pointed out.

Pehril nodded. “To some extent, yes. Just depends on how much and why they are doing it.”

As they walked, they continued discussing how the city had changed, with Landelth filling in what blanks he could and providing the occasional tip on how to act and what not to say where. During one lull in the conversation, when Sygren and Hanthir walked further ahead to chat about a play they had watched a few nights ago, Pehril bent down to whisper to Landelth.

“I’ve been meaning to ask,” he murmured, shifting uncomfortably, “and I don’t want to be rude or sound insensitive, but, well, what exactly _is_ Sygren?”

Landelth shook his head, though still kept his eyes on the horizon. “Hells if I know. I only just met them yesterday.”

“Really? But your brother seems so comfortable around him.”

Landelth frowned. It was another few seconds before he understood Pehril’s meaning and was promptly taken aback. “‘Brother—?’ Oh, no! Hanthir and I aren’t related. He and Sygren came to town together and I didn’t even know they existed before the constable introduced us.”

“Wait, really?” This time Pehril reeled. “But you look so similar!” Almost as soon as the words left his lips, Pehril’s eyes widened. “I didn’t mean it like that,” he hurried to add. “Not because of your heritage or anything, I mean. I’m sorry if it came out sounding like that, but I really meant that, physically, you two look like you could be siblings.”

Landelth suppressed a twinge of annoyance at the assumption, reminding himself that it was an honest mistake and had little to do with his pointed ears. “Nope. We’re not.” Now that he took a second to consider it, though, he could see why Pehril had assumed such. They were of the same height, similar builds, similar hair… Even though their faces and skin were different, he could still understand the perception. “I don’t actually have any brothers or sisters. Or cousins, actually.”

“That’s… wow. Really? None?”

Landelth shook his head with a bemused half smile. “Nope. Or at least none I’m aware of. My aunts and uncles haven’t exactly been productive.”

“But what about more distant cousins? From your grandparents’ siblings?”

“Well, my mother hasn’t told me too much about her parents’ siblings. Don’t even know if there are any, but my father’s father had eleven brothers and sisters. A couple of them had kids, but apparently they all died in a war or from disease.”

“That’s… horrible. I’m sorry.”

“Thanks, but it’s not like I knew them or anything. Can’t really mourn something if you never had it.”

“I suppose, but it’s just… odd. I mean, I have two brothers, a sister, and more cousins than I can count. I just grew up around family and not having that in my life would have felt… well, really different.” He blinked. “Anyhow, you think we can ask what Sygren is?”

Landelth sucked in a breath. “I think that might be a bit rude… But we might be able to work up to it.” He quickened his pace and caught up to the other two as Hanthir’s and Sygren’s conversation paused. “Hey, Pehril and I were wondering, how do you two know each other?”

Sygren looked over his shoulder. “Huh? Oh, we’re cousins.”

Landelth narrowed his eyes. “I’m not sure if you’re serious or joking…” he ventured.

“Okay, to be fair,” Hanthir said, “it’s almost always hard to tell with Sygren.”

“Hey!”

“But, really, we’re cousins. We grew up seeing each other every few months.”

Landelth’s eyebrows rose. “Huh. Who’s side of family do you share?”

“My dad and his mom are brother and sister,” Sygren explained. “Wouldn’t guess it, though. She’s a pretty typical thin, short wood elf and he’s so big that most people don’t think he’s an elf at all until they see his ears.”

“Really?” Landelth walked to stand abreast of them. “Mind me asking what kind of elf he is?”

“Oh, he’s a wood elf too. Just a weirdly big one.”

“Guess that’s where you get it from,” Pehril said, a little too hurriedly. 

Sygren looked askance at him. “Uh, well, yeah. I guess. Sort of.”

“‘Sort of?’” Landelth asked, hoping to deflect attention from Pehril.

“Well, how many big, black elves do you know?”

“None…?”

“Yeah. Me neither.” He added as an afterthought “And I’m not a dark elf either, if that’s what you’re thinking.” He kept walking, acting as if the conversation were settled.

“Okay then.” Landelth grit his teeth. _Now the awkward part._ “Then, if you don’t mind my asking, how come you look so different from Hanthir and other elves?”

Sygren rolled his eyes and gave him a droll look. “You know, you could’ve just asked right away instead of going through all that trouble to find out.”

Landelth grimaced. “Well, I didn’t know if it was a sensitive subject…”

“Wait, that’s what you were getting at?” Hanthir said, surprised. He gave Landelth a soft slap on his armor, which startled Landelth and nearly made him reach for one of his swords. “Just go ahead and ask us about something like that! Don’t need to hide it.”

“Yeah, it’s not a big deal. Really.” Sygren rolled his eyes, shaking his head. “I’ve heard it all before. Besides, you’re not being asses about it, so we’re fine.”

Landelth felt himself relax a fraction and he saw Pehril’s whole body loosen. “All right then, why do you look the way you do?”

“Well, apparently I’ve got a dao in my family somewhere.”

Landelth blinked. “I’m sorry, a what?”

Pehril’s mouth dropped. “I’m sorry, but you have a freakin’ _genie_ in your family?!”

“Yup.”

“Wait, so a dao is a genie?”

“Earth genie,” Sygren said. 

Landelth looked at Hanthir the half-elf and his cousin Sygren, the whatever-the-hell he was. As he did, he could not help thinking _The women in this family must have had some serious curiosity…_

“No one told me how it happened or why,” Sygren explained. “Not sure when it happened either. Don’t think even my mom knows, and it’s on her side. Long time ago is all we can say.”

“But she isn’t beefy like you?” Landelth asked.

“Nope. Apparently it just happens to the kids sometimes. Every now and then, one’s born like this. Less and less since… well, whenever it happened, but you can still get unlucky. Or lucky. Depends how you look at it.”

Now that Landelth was at a better angle, he could better see the mask on Sygren’s head. It bore a bearded face split into what was probably a belly-splitting laugh. Landelth found the frozen expression just a little unsettling.

“Why would it be lucky or unlucky?” Pehril asked, moving closer to surreptitiously inspect Sygren.

Sygren turned his incredulous stare onto the taller man. “Uh, look at me,” he said, gesturing to himself. “For one thing, with the pointed ears and black skin, some people think I’m a dark elf, and that’s never fun. It also makes people wonder if your mom’s a whore, superstitious or ignorant people might think you’re a demon… Lots of things.” Almost as an afterthought, he added “Also, it’s really hard to get laid when no one can make out just what you are.”

“Nah,” Hanthir said. “That’s just because it’s you.”

“Oh, fuck off!” He swatted a gauntlet at Hanthir who knocked it away on his vambrace, cackling.

Landelth snorted while trying to suppress his own laugh. “Okay, so what’re the benefits?”

“Uh, I already said: Look at me.” 

“No one wants to look at you for that long,” Hanthir said as a matter of fact.

“Again, Hanthir: Go fuck yourself.”

“Would if I could. Have you seen how gorgeous I am?” Hanthir tossed his hair like a preening maid.

“We’re ignoring him,” Sygren said, turning to the others. “Point is, I’m just bigger and stronger because of it. Skin is tougher too. And I can mess with dirt a little, so that it’s easier to stay quiet while moving and to throw off trackers. Just erase everything we leave behind, but it’s not something I can do often. And for some reason I can read Primordial. Don’t know why. Never studied it. I just can.”

“That last one,” Pehril said, “makes me extremely jealous. I had to study for years just to speak Common, and Common’s easy compared to the others I’ve learned!”

“What other languages do you know?”

“Vedalkin, of course, Sylvan, Elvish, and Celestial.”

Hanthir’s mouth dropped open. “Holy gods that’s a lot. Really? How did you learn so many?!”

“Well, I’ve had over forty-three years, so there’s been plenty of time.”

“All right," Landelth said, “but maybe we should be asking ‘why?’”

“They helped with my studies.”

“But you’re not a priest,” Sygren said, half as a question.

“No. Why?”

“Well, if you’re not a priest or something like that, then why bother learning Celestial? Seems kind of useless if you’re not reading scripture.”

“Well, there’s been a lot of decent scholarship to come out of the various faiths.” Pehril lifted his hands as if weighing something in them. “Not all of it’s exactly unbiased, but that’s a problem in any field or publication or, well, anything. Also, you can still find original carvings and art that was left behind by the gods or the people who were alive while the gods were still around.”

“So, you study the gods on an academic level?” Landelth ventured.

“No.” Pehril paused and reconsidered. “Well, I mean, sort of. I guess.” Pehril wobbled his hands to illustrate vacillation. “They come into it, yeah, but I really look more at the actual history, rather than all of the stories people made up about unimaginably powerful entities.”

“Wait, ‘Made up?’” Sygren said, giving Pehril what might have been a dirty look, but might have just been his normal countenance. “Like what?”

“Well, historically speaking, most of the stories you read in each major religion’s sacred texts are either exaggerated, altered, or entirely fabricated. There’s a grain of truth to them, usually, so they’re worth looking into, but they’re not really…” He trailed off as he noticed Sygren’s darkening expression. “Um, sorry. Did I offend you?”

“What?” He blew a raspberry. “No. Just gonna have to have a talk with someone later about that.”

“Um, okay then. Sorry.” Sygren waved him off. “Anyway, I study the history of magical theory. You know, how people over time understood magic and how it influenced their relationships to each other and the world itself.”

“Is that what you were doing in Fandír?” Hanthir asked. 

“Well, no. I’m actually only a junior master, rather than a full one, so pretty much anything I work on has to be under the auspices of a master. Usually that means that, if I’m going to do anything at all with my university, I have to help a full master with their research or development projects.”

“Ah. Got it.” Hanthir sidestepped an orange tabby cat that appeared from a field and prepared to laze in the sunny road. “So when will you become a full master?”

Pehril groaned. “Uh, not really sure. You get your mastership according to the university’s chancellors.” Seeing Hanthir’s and Sygren’s curious expressions, he continued. “If they say you’ve completed enough good work to merit the title, then they grant it to you.” He hesitated a moment, pursing his lips. “Problem is, you can’t just apply on your own. You need to be recommended by another full master for consideration. Then the chancellors review you and, if you’ve satisfied them, you become a full master.”

“Well, how long does that take?” Hanthir asked.

“Depends. Some people get accepted after just three or four years. Others, it takes a decade.”

“And how long have you been going to this university for?”

Landelth noticed Pehril try not to cringe. “Twenty-one years.” He sighed. “It’s all pretty political. Either I haven’t impressed them or no one has recommended me yet.” As if the words were pried from his mouth, he added “And not everyone is enthusiastic about my interest in alternative applications of magic.”

That stalled the conversation. _Twenty-one years?_ Landelth wondered if they had been saddled with an incompetent who the university, or at least that older master, was simply trying to get rid of. _He’s been at the university ever since I was a baby and he’s still not a master?_ Glancing at the other two, he saw Hanthir offer his sympathy. Sygren’s expression, however, implied that he was having similar thoughts to Landelth's.

As they continued chatting for another ten minutes or so, Landelth wondered how he could measure Pehril’s abilities accurately without seeming too untrusting or like a taskmaster. He did not want Pehril to know that he doubted him, but he could not leave an entirely untested person guarding his back. As the others talked, he considered various scenarios to evaluate Pehril before discarding each as too basic, too dangerous, or too exhausting. While weighing the merits of a sparring match, he glimpsed between a row of crops a hump of greenish-yellow flesh a ways off to the right of the road.

He trotted ahead of the others and held up his hand for them to stop. “I think we found the ogre that the constable was talking about,” he said, pointing. Just as the constable had said, the ogre seemed to have established itself near the river. Though it was hard to spot from here, Landelth caught a glimmer of scintillating light from where the water wound around the fields and hillocks before joining the ocean. The ogre seemed to have recently “bathed” and was drying itself in the sun under a tangled stand of trees growing in a twisted clump out of a tall outcropping that stood alone on the otherwise gently rolling land. As far as shelters went, it would effectively keep the rain off, provided that it was only coming from the southwest and was blown nearly horizontal by the wind.

Sygren grimaced. “Okay. Keeping well away from that, I guess.” Pehril nodded, already moving to cut across the field to their left and leave the ogre a wide berth.

“Actually,” Landelth began, an idea forming, “I think that we should probably take care of it.”


	3. Aggressive Negotiations

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Landelth presses the group to address the ogre problem as a way to test Pehril's capabilities. After debating whether they should "take care of" the ogre, Pehril convinces them to try a more diplomatic solution. Ogres are not known for their sensibility, however, so the blue wizard has his work cut out for him...

Hearing Landelth's suggestion, Hanthir just shrugged. “Okay.” Just like that, he moved to cut across the field on their right and start walking toward the ogre.

“Excuse me, wait.” Pehril jogged to put himself in front of the others. “Why are we looking to fight the big, sleeping giant that probably will want to eat us?” His tone was reasonable enough, but with just enough of a sarcastic bite to let Landelth know what Pehril thought of the notion.

“Because it’s sleeping and will probably want to eat us,” Landelth said, pulling his bow off of his back. Setting one end between his feet, he strained his back and shoulders to bend the wood, stringing it with a grunt. “People drink from that river, use it to irrigate the fields, fish, and do their laundry. If they can’t access the river, they can’t tend the crops or themselves. There are lots of farmers and others around here that aren’t equipped to fight that thing. Some have already fled their homes to get away from it.”

“Okay, that’s a fair point,” Pehril said, “but there are only four of us. Besides, isn’t this more a job for the city guard?”

Sygren frowned. “I think they’re hunting the trolls today.”

“Yup,” Landelth answered. “They’re going to be pretty busy with that. Trolls move around more than ogres and are more dangerous in a fight. Finding them’s the constable’s top priority. Doesn’t mean we should just leave this bastard lying around until later, though. He could do a lot of damage before that, and not just by whatever he leaves in the river when he takes a bath.” 

Pehril blinked. “Uh, ogres don’t bathe.”

“Well, this one does,” Sygren pointed out.

“What kind of an ogre takes baths?”

“The kind that’s decided to live within a stone’s throw of some farms that he could tear apart. Landelth’s right. I don’t think farmers could put up too much of a fight against something like that. At least not without a lot of them getting hurt.”

“Okay, again, that’s a fair point,” Pehril conceded, “but, again, there’s only _four_ of us.”

“Actually, we’ll probably be fine,” Hanthir said. “Ogres are tough, but not _that_ tough. And they’re dumb. And I mean _really_ dumb. Pretty easy to keep busy until you kill them.”

Landelth cocked an eyebrow. “You’ve fought them before?”

“No, but I’d heard stories from some of the others in my old barracks.”

Pehril shook his head. “I’m not sure if stories are enough to go on.”

“Actually, he’s right too,” Landelth said. “Killed a couple with my old teacher while I was in training. Just the two of us, but we fought smart and killed the first one before it could get close.” He nocked an arrow and checked to see that the swords at his waist were loose and ready to draw. “The other one, we went at like hunting dogs. Hurt it and baited its attention then let someone else do it. Just repeated that until it died.”

“Just the two of you?” Pehril asked, incredulous. “And you didn’t get hurt?”

“We got a bit lucky,” Landelth admitted, “and I was in a sling until we could get my broken arm and ribs mended.” He saw Pehril’s expression shift from incredulity to wondering if Landelth was insane. “It really wasn’t that bad. I was stupid and let it get a hit in.” He pulled off his pack so that it would not burden him and rolled his shoulders, making sure that his armor sat well. “Finding Sharidin is our mission, but this won’t take long. Might as well kill it while we’re here. Make sure it doesn’t do any more damage before the guards can take care of it.” He turned to Pehril. “Besides, this’d be a good chance for us to see what you have to offer! Mind showing us what spells you’d use to take it down?”

Pehril blanched. “Uh… I’d really rather not. I don’t like taking unnecessary risks.”

Landelth nodded. “Don’t blame you. I’d normally agree, but I don’t feel comfortable leaving this at our back when it could decide it’s hungry and kill someone any minute.” _I also want to see what you can do._ He plastered on another cocky smile, even if he felt about as tense as his bow. “Consider it a warm up before we get into a real fight.”

“And fighting an ogre isn’t ‘real?’”

“I mean, it’ll still kill you if you’re not careful. Eat you too. But with all of us together? Shouldn’t be much of a risk.”

“Still doesn’t seem like a good idea,” Pehril said, shaking his head and looking toward the distant giant. “It’s still a living creature. Maybe we should leave it alone.”

“Pehril, my friend,” Hanthir said, putting a hand on Pehril’s shoulder and looking at him as though he could not decide if the scholar was joking or simply stupid. “It’s not exactly a person. Those things go around eating anything they can find that’s made of meat. Cow? Sure. Goat? Yeah. A kid or some old man? That’s still lunch to them.” He paused. “Oh wait. That was a pun. Get it? Kid? Goat?” He laughed, though Landelth thought it was more for their benefit than genuine mirth. “I’m so funny. Anyway, it probably wouldn’t even appreciate if one was chewy and the other crunchy. Also, they’re way too stupid to deserve being treated like a person. They just smash and eat things and they can’t be reasoned with. Only tricked, and you can trick a dog. I love dogs, but dogs aren’t people. One goes rabid and, well… Sorry. You’ve gotta put old Spot down.”

Pehril’s expression remained concerned and hesitant, but frustration and scorn crept into his voice. “That seems like an exceptionally narrow-minded view of personhood. Just because someone doesn’t have the same mental capacities as us doesn’t mean that they aren’t a person. By your standard, a mentally impaired human isn’t a person.”

“That’s not what I’m saying.”

“It _really_ sounds like it is.”

“Person or not,” Landelth interrupted, “it’s going to do a lot more harm out here than good. So we either take care of it now or we walk away and let the guards do it and hope that the ogre doesn’t kill anyone or leave them homeless or destitute before it’s put down. I get if you’re nervous about fighting, trust me, it makes perfect sense.” _And the possibility is making me shiver and tremble like I’m about to jump off a cliff._ “But we’ve got your back. Besides, hitting it while it’s asleep is our best chance and would save some of the guardsmen from getting hurt.”

“It’s not about being nervous, it’s that you are talking about killing a thinking creature just because it _might_ harm someone.” Though Landelth doubted that was the whole reason, Pehril looked between the three of them. “Doesn’t that seem a little wrong to any of you?”

Sygren threw his head back and groaned. “Oh for the love of—”

Landelth spoke over Sygren before he or Hanthir could continue. “Maybe it is wrong.” When he saw that he had Pehril’s attention and that the other two were not about to butt in again, he continued. “But we still need him out of here. You don’t leave a fox near a hen house.” He raised his hand before the others could protest. “I understand that you don’t want to fight, though. So do you have any ideas about how we could get rid of it?” As far as Landelth was concerned, seeing how Pehril approached a problem outside of combat was just as important as his ability to throw fireballs and lightning.

“Uh, well, I could try talking to it,” Pehril said, shrugging, his eyes darting to the distant figure. From where they stood, Landelth thought that he could hear snoring.

Hanthir gaped. “Wait, you speak giant languages too?”

“Well, no, and it’s only one language with a bunch of dialects, but I know a spell that will let me understand what they’re saying. Just need a few minutes to prepare it.”

“Okay, that does it,” Hanthir said, throwing up his hands. “You clearly know too much to be allowed to live.” He pulled back the string on an imaginary bow and “shot” Pehril, who did not crack a smile.

“If you want to talk to it, be my guest,” Sygren said, bowing and sweeping his hand out for Pehril to go first. “We’ll tell your master what happened when the ogre’s finished picking its teeth with your humerus.”

Hanthir pretended to look confused. “That doesn’t seem very humorous to me.”

“Shut up.” Sygren continued while Hanthir snickered. “Seriously, you want to try waking it up and talking to it? Go ahead. We’ll watch out for you. This is just very risky. You understand that?”

“Or…” Pehril said, again speaking as if the others were particularly slow, “we could just leave it alone.”

Hanthir, still smiling slightly, said “ _You_ could leave it alone, if you want. You walk away, though, and _I’m_ making sure that it doesn’t hurt anyone else.” He drew his short sword into his left hand to illustrate. His smile faded. “In all seriousness, that thing is dangerous. Could’ve eaten someone last night before we even left Fandír. Leave it for longer, and it’ll just keep eating and breaking things like a massive toddler with a temper problem and all of us acting as its combination food and toys.”

“Thing is, Hanthir’s right,” Sygren said. “And Hanthir’s never right.”

“Hey!”

“So we kill this thing, or you find a way to make it leave. Sorry, but it’s one or the other.”

Pehril looked between them, or rather down on them from his height, in disbelief. His mouth worked for a few seconds, trying to form another argument. He looked over his shoulder at the sleeping giant then back at the others’ expressions: Sygren’s impatient, Hanthir’s neutral, and Landelth’s curious. “Fine. I’ll talk to him. Just give me a few minutes.” Pehril took off his bag, laid his cloak on the ground, knelt there, and began pulling various oddments from pouches at his side. Placing a palm-sized, etched iron plate in front of him, Pehril sprinkled a flaky grey powder and white granules onto the engraved surface. Sifting the plate so that the materials fell into the crevices that formed a series of overlapping circles and runes, he began muttering incantations and twisting his long, blue fingers in precise, uncomfortable-looking gestures.

After a time, Pehril relaxed, waved his hand and, with a word, the two substances separated and he poured them back into their pouches. “All right,” he said, packing the plate away. “I’m ready.”

“Um, what did you do?” Landelth asked, feeling like he was an idiot and had missed something obvious. 

“I made it so that I can understand any language, like I said.”

“Really?” Landelth switched to a throaty, growling and sibilant language. “Can you understand me?”

“Yes,” Pehril replied in Eliusian, “but I have no idea what language you’re speaking in.”

“Huh,” Landelth said, reverting to Eliusian himself. “Useful.”

“Very.” Repacked, Pehril stood, putting his cloak and bag back on. Looking again at the sleeping ogre, he said something in a language that Landelth could not understand. Judging by the emotion behind it, though, he guessed that it was a curse. “Shall we?” Pehril stepped forward, his long legs easily putting him ahead of the others who followed at their own pace behind him.

_He’s brave, at least_ , Landelth thought, carrying his bag over his shoulder and ready to drop it as he watched the thin figure approach a predator easily five times his weight. _Even willing to put himself in danger if it means doing the right thing._ He saw Sygren and Hanthir likewise pull off their bags. _Just hope that doesn’t come back to bite us in the ass somewhere down the line_. Watching Pehril slow down as they left the crop field and the reality of what he was doing set in, Landelth wondered if the scholar would crumble and leave. If so, there would not be anything involving both himself and Pehril in the future. At least not when it came to expeditions.

Slinging his pack around, Landelth retrieved a long, narrow bottle with a clear liquid inside. “What’s that?” Sygren asked as he dropped his own bag on the ground at the edge of the field as Hanthir did the same.

Unstoppering it, Landelth dipped his arrow into the fluid. “Poison. Just in case.” Juggling his things a little, he put the bottle away, nocked the arrow again, and resumed. “Ogres are tough, but if I hit him with this near the head or heart, it’ll slow him down. Even getting him in the leg with make him woozy and sick, but it’ll take a minute to hit.”

“Hope the blue guy doesn’t get splattered before then.”

“He’ll be fine!” Hanthir said, rapping Sygren with the flat of his blade. “He’s got us!”

Sygren gave Hanthir a sidelong look. “Yeah, that’s not reassuring.” With that, he jogged forward, his armor clinking rhythmically as he fell into step alongside Pehril and drew his war hammer. Seeing the burly figure join him, Pehril visibly relaxed and stood a little straighter. 

As they neared, Landelth let himself fall back, circling around to have both a clear shot at the ogre and his eye on the other three. _Just in case_ , he thought.

Pehril stopped about fifteen feet from the ogre, whose snores were like the angry snorts of ten horses. Its tiny eyes were closed beneath its jutting forehead and its jaw was open and slack, showing a massive underbite and a set of yellow fangs, each the size of Landelth’s thumb. Pehril took a deep breath, and shook himself. “Excuse me,” he croaked, though his voice was largely drowned out by the snores. When the ogre did not stir, he grimaced and tried again. “Excuse me!” he called, louder this time. The ogre did not budge. Pehril cringed and drew in a deep breath, prompting Landelth to draw his bowstring to his ear. “ _Excuse me!_ ” Pehril shouted.

Landelth had half expected the giant to snap upright and take a swing. Instead, its beady, orange eyes slowly blinked open. It shifted then pressed itself upright on one arm to look over its shoulder at Pehril, who stood by its feet. With how long it was taking to rouse itself, Landelth eased the tension from his bow, saving his strength.

Through thick, fat lips, it rumbled something slurred and gravelly that Landelth supposed were words. “Um, I’m sorry to bother you,” Pehril called. “Can you understand me?” The ogre growled something else. “Well, uh, I’m sorry to ask, but, uh, could you move?” The ogre uttered a single sound. “You’re scaring a lot of people who live near here.” Again, one syllable from the ogre. “No, it’s not. The town guard now wants to kill you, unless you leave.” The ogre said something else. Landelth watched its slab-like hands to see if it would reach for the small tree that lay uprooted beside it. “They are well trained. You might kill a few, but they’ll kill you too. Is it worth it?” Landelth circled a little further to get a glimpse of the ogre’s new home. 

“There is plenty of food in the forest too,” Pehril continued. “Much easier to kill and eat than people.” Laid in the shadow of the rocks and tucked beneath a tangle of heavy roots, Landelth could see a pile of random things that the ogre had brought or stolen since arriving. What looked like part of a fence lay atop a chest lid that lacked a bottom half. “Are you from the forest?” Next to the half of a chest sat a stained sack filled with something lumpy or several somethings. As the breeze passed, Landelth caught a whiff of excrement and mildew. “Then you don’t know? There’s a treasure in the forest.” Beside the sack, torn nearly inside out, was the remains of a cow, only identifiable by two hooves and the intact section of its bashed-in head. Landelth felt himself favoring a decision regarding this creature, no matter whether Pehril succeeded. “Gold and a mighty sword. You could find it!” Skirting a few steps further, Landelth saw a middle aged woman lying on the ground. Pale, she stared at the ogre, mouth agape, her splintered ribs pointing to the sky from where the lower half of her body had been bitten off. “We are too afraid to go there. We are weak, but you are big and strong! You would be safe in the forest!” Landelth’s mind was made up. Still, he wanted to see where this would go. “No. I said that we wouldn’t go there.” Landelth continued to creep behind the sparse bushes near the river’s bank until he was behind the ogre and out of sight. Fortunately, the groggy thing had not seemed to notice him. “He wants your hammer,” Pehril said, turning to Sygren.

Sygren snorted. “He’s not getting my hammer.”

Pehril grimaced. “You might want to give him your hammer.” The ogre pushed itself to a sitting position and growled, its rolls of fat almost indistinguishable from its heavy muscle. “He says he’ll kill and eat us then take the hammer.”

Sygren rolled his eyes. “Tell him that my hammer kills anyone who wields it except for me.”

“He could understand that, actually.” Pehril snapped back as the ogre spoke. “There is a powerful spell upon it, blessed by a powerful god to make you sick with plague.” The giant growled something else. “He says he wants your armor, then.”

“He can’t even wear my armor.”

“I don’t think that’s the point.” The ogre barked a deep-throated shout. “He says ‘Now.’”

“Well, my armor will explode and kill you if I take it off.”

The ogre growled something. “He’s getting pretty frustrated,” he translated. “And hungry.” Landelth pulled the cord on his bow back again. Only sixty or so feet away, it would be hard to miss such a big target.

“Well, can we give him some food so that he’ll just fucking leave already?”

Before Pehril could reply, the ogre seized the dead tree it used for an oversized club and, from where it sat, wound up to pulverize the two of them with one swing. 

Landelth loosed his bow. The poisoned arrow hissed through the air and punched through the back of the ogre’s neck, just to the left of its spine, burying itself nearly to the fletching. The longbow was heavy enough to cut through light plate armor and the force of the impact knocked the ogre’s head forward as he barked in pain and surprise. “Pehril!” Landelth shouted. “Get back!” The ogre turned, thrusting itself to its feet to look back at Landelth. He could see the tip of his arrow creating a slight bulge beneath the ogre’s skin where the point threatened to pierce the thick flesh. Only then did he belatedly realize that the ogre also had no clothes.

The ogre growled and took a step forward, ready to pelt toward Landelth, when a spectral, skeletal hand appeared just above it. Landelth, more shocked and startled by that, nocked another arrow and nearly shot at the hand instead of the ogre when the bony apparition darted forward and latched onto the top of the ogre’s head. Landelth watched as the ogre’s jaundiced, yellow face started turning grey. The monster released a harsh gasp as it sagged just before something crackled and the ogre lurched forward as it was struck in the back. It turned again to Pehril and Sygren, granting Landelth a glimpse of Hanthir gathering more silvery-black energy in his open hand and showing where the last bolt had blasted a chunk out of the ogre’s shoulder, leaving a shallow, bleeding crater. Before Landelth could loose his next shot, the ogre used its momentum to swing its club across at Sygren and Pehril. Sygren stepped back, though one of the tree’s root’s caught him. The armor absorbed the blow and he turned with it, keeping his balance as he tensed to rush forward with his hammer. Pehril, however, stumbled back, but not far enough as the thickest section of trunk rushed toward him. He flung his hands up and a translucent, blue shell appeared. The club collided with an audible crack of rotted bark, deflecting off of the shallowly curved barrier. Though the blow did not touch Pehril, enough force hit the shield that he was flung back several feet, slamming him into the rocks they fought beneath. Landelth swore, drawing his bow back, then noticed Pehril jump back up, his pack seeming to have taken the brunt of the force.

Another arrow punched through the ogre’s back, sliding between its ribs as Hanthir blasted apart some of the ogre’s thigh. Eyes wide and trying to regain his balance, Pehril wove his hands through the air, crossing them before throwing them out as if pushing something as a thunderous boom ripped through the morning. Landelth felt wind rush past him as the air seemed to vibrate around the ogre, causing him to stumble and stagger. Sygren took the chance to close the distance and slam his war hammer double-handed into the ogre’s knee with a meaty crunch, just below the wound his cousin had caused. 

The ogre’s leg gave out as its resonant voice hollered in pain and rage and it threw a hand forward to catch itself. That hand nearly crushed Sygren, who managed to step out of the way and bring the hammer in an overhead blow to the side of the ogre’s face, shattering its cheek. This time, though, Sygren did not move fast enough as the ogre thrust with its good leg, turning the creature as it slammed its weapon into the shield on Sygren’s back as he tried to evade. The steel took the worst of it, but the blow launched Sygren off of his feet to topple into the dirt a little ways off. Still gripping his hammer, he pulled himself upright, wobbling and grimacing in pain. As the ogre tried to pursue, Landelth put another arrow through its ribs, just under its left armpit, and Hanthir launched another spell into its face, blasting away skin and sending a yellow tooth flying into the bushes.

The ogre managed to get its injured leg under it just long enough to limp another step toward Sygren before it slowed. Swaying a little, the ogre could not balance or arrest its momentum as it fell forward, the injured leg moving instinctually to support it and collapsing under the weight. As the ogre plowed into the dirt, Landelth shot a fourth arrow into its armpit, just above the last shaft, and another streak of silver-limned black shredded part of the ogre’s weapon arm. They waited a few breaths to see if it would stay down, weapons at the ready. 

It tried to push itself up, but started swaying again and made gagging sounds as it started to heave. Shaking and shivering as it retched, Sygren staggered forward, took his hammer in both hands, wound up, and drove the spiked side of his weapon straight through the ogre’s temple.

Landelth could not see the ogre’s expression from where he stood, but the results were clear as it twitched on its hands and knees before slumping forward, yanking Sygren and his hammer with it before falling still.

Landelth lowered his drawn bow and walked forward. He jumped back as the ogre convulsed before he noticed Sygren trying to pry his weapon from the corpse’s brain.

“You okay?” Landelth asked as he looked over the body. Thankfully, it had fallen on its front. One mental image of that side was enough for a lifetime. 

“Yeah,” Sygren grunted as he finally pulled his weapon free with a sucking sound. “Kinda gambled on that last hit. If that hadn’t killed it, I would’ve lost my hammer. That would’ve sucked.”

“No kidding.” Landelth huffed. “Gotta say, this one was tougher than I was expecting.”

“Yup.”

“He wasn’t that bad!” Hanthir said, stepping closer. 

Sygren made a confused and skeptical look that Landelth was already becoming familiar with on this person. “And how much help were you during that?”

“I was helpful!”

“You didn’t even use a real spell! Just kept hitting it with soft stuff.”

“You had it handled! Didn’t want to waste anything in case things got worse.”

“Like when it threw me through the air like a kitten?”

“It wasn’t _that_ bad.”

While they bickered, Landelth walked to where Pehril was staring at the corpse. “What about you? Are you okay?”

After a moment, Pehril nodded. “I didn’t get hurt.”

“I wasn’t talking about an injury. How’re you doing?”

Pehril met his eyes then looked back at the dead ogre. “I can’t believe I just helped you kill something.”

“Sorry. It can be hard the first few times.” He decided not to mention that, for some, it never got easier.

“A living, thinking thing.”

Landelth nodded. “Yeah.” He put a hand on Pehril’s back, being too short to put an arm around his shoulders and support him. “Come have a seat. I think we’re going to take a breather after that.” Pehril nodded and let Landelth lead him to a smaller boulder where he could rest.


	4. Forest's Edge

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The party regroups after their encounter before making their way to Fandír Forest.

“I shouldn’t have done that,” Pehril said a few moments after he sat down, pointedly not looking at the dead ogre.

“It needed to be done.”

Pehril looked up at Landelth. “Did it?” He asked it as a challenge more than anything else.

Landelth managed to stifle his annoyance and speak levelly. “Ogres are predators and bullies. If a murderer was walking around the city, you can bet the guards or someone else would jail or kill him too.”

“Just think of these things like bandits,” Hanthir said, skirting the corpse as he walked toward them. “Same sort of thing. Just bigger, stronger, meaner, and usually much stupider.”

“But does a bandit deserve to die?”

“I mean, if they attack you…” Hanthir trailed off, leaving his opinion plain.

“Maybe, maybe not,” Landelth said, shrugging. “But when it comes to a fight, especially one that someone else starts, all that matters is who survives and gets to walk away at the end.” Now that Pehril was sitting, Landelth was finally tall enough to put a hand on his thin shoulder. Pehril tensed and Landelth only then realized that his words and attitude might be perceived as condescending and pulled back. “You should look over there.” Landelth pointed and Pehril’s gaze followed to see the remaining half of the dead woman and the mangled cow. “We were too late to save them, but this means that the ogre won’t be attacking anyone else.”

Pehril’s eyes widened and his lean frame shivered as he took in the corpses. “Oh gods,” he murmured. 

_At least he doesn’t look like he’s going to be sick,_ Landelth thought. He would not have blamed the man if he did puke, but the lack of physical illness probably meant it would be easier for Pehril to recover. “I won’t tell you what’s right and wrong. Personally, I think we did a good thing and, whether it’s good or not, I can say pretty certainly that we’ve done something to protect the people who live in this area. It’s up to you how you see this, though.”

“Yeah, no shit,” Pehril snapped. Landelth was taken aback. “Thank you for trying to help, but please don’t patronize me.”

“Uh, sorry,” Landelth stammered, ignoring the flair of indignant anger in his chest. “I didn’t mean to.”

Pehril took a deep breath and let it out. “It’s fine,” he said, though Landelth surmised that it wasn’t. “Just give me a minute. Chances are, you’re right. Just going to take me a minute.”

Landelth did not want to say anything that might upset Pehril further, so he simply nodded and walked to where the ogre had stashed its things. There, among what he had already seen, he noticed a rancid string of pelts that the ogre had probably used to cover its now exposed lower parts.

“Want to check the bag?” Hanthir asked.

Landelth shook his head. “Probably nothing interesting in there.”

“Maybe, but ogres like money. Might’ve stolen and hoarded some.”

Landelth looked at the sack, spotted with various dried fluids. Everything here stank already and he was not sure he wanted to find out what the inside of the bag smelled like. “Be my guest.”

“Oh,” Hanthir tried to appear nonchalant. “Well, this is your territory, so you should get first pick out of whatever’s in there.”

Landelth gave him a look, but before he could reply, Sygren said “He just doesn’t want to touch it. Can’t really blame him, though. That thing looks disgusting.”

Landelth nodded. “No one else seems to be volunteering, though?” He let the question hang. The other two looked away and Pehril did not seem to have even noticed the conversation. “All right then.” Landelth pulled off his gloves, not wanting to get them dirty and maybe leave them with a lasting odor.  _It’s like handling a corpse,_ he thought, steeling himself as he undid the leather tie and grabbed the bottom of the rough fabric.  _Just like a dead animal. You can wash it off later._

He pulled, hauling with his feet as the bag tipped and its contents spilled out in a line. He lifted and gave it a good shake, just to be sure he had not missed anything, then tossed the sack aside, resisting the urge to wipe his now oily fingers on his clothes.

The sack’s contents were just about as worthless as the other bits the ogre had collected: a few quartz crystals and rocks that might shine when wet, a rusted helmet and dented grieve, a hunting horn, and a handful of coppers. 

He picked out the coppers, carrying them toward the river. “You guys are welcome to the rest. Normally I’d be glad to take the horn, but I’m not putting that thing anywhere near my lips.” He saw the others nod vigorously as he knelt and began washing the money and his hands as best he could in the cool water.

After a thorough scrubbing and then an extra two scrubs in the silt for his hands, Landelth returned to find that the others had retrieved his arrows for him, all unbroken. “Here,” he said, holding out the coins. “There’s enough for four each, plus a couple extra. I’d say Sygren deserves them for taking those hits like he did.”

“Won’t argue with you there,” Sygren said, taking his share.

“So what should we do about the woman?” Hanthir asked as he slipped the coins into a pouch.

Landelth shrugged. “Leave her here, I guess. The constable and his men will find her and they’re better equipped to handle that than we are, I think. I’m not that familiar with the woman and her family, but he or one of his men ought to know her better.”

“Just seems kind of…” Sygren trailed off, searching for the right word. “Rude? Is it rude to leave her here like this?”

“Kind of feels like it,” Hanthir said. 

Landelth nodded. “I don’t even know where she lives, though.” He grimaced. “Lived,” he corrected himself. “I guess we could carry her back to town, but that’d cost us another couple of hours. Guess there’s not that much urgency, but I’d like to get things back to normal sooner rather than later.”

“I get that, but, that was a person,” Sygren said, gesturing.

“I mean, she’s not going anywhere,” Hanthir offered. Landelth offered a grudging nod. “Or we could try to find the constable and bring them here.”

“Could take longer than just carrying the body back.” Landelth heaved a sigh. “You know what? You guys wait here with Pehril. I’m in good shape. I’ll run to the nearest farm and ask if the people who live there know anything.”

“Sounds good.” Hanthir looked to where Pehril sat. “Could do with a bit more rest anyhow, I think.”

“Says the person who didn’t get batted.”

Hanthir waved him off. “Oh, you’re fine!” 

Landelth could not help smiling. “One of you mind washing my arrows while I’m gone? Don’t want to stink of ogre while going through the woods.”

“Sure,” Hanthir said. “Just hope they don’t warp from the water.”

“They shouldn’t if you wipe them down right away and leave them in the sun. Just don’t let them soak.” 

Hanthir nodded, then looked back at the ogre. “Holy hells, though, that thing was big. Nearly as long as my forearm!” 

Sygren looked taken aback. “Um, it was most  _definitely_ bigger than your forearm. It was standing twice your height, Cousin.”

“Um, I wasn’t talking about his height.” Hanthir shook his head. “I don’t even think he was aroused.”

After a moment, Sygren groaned. “Really?!  _That’s_ what you were looking at?”

“Well, he wasn’t exactly wearing pants! It was kind of hard not to!”

“What?” Landelth asked. “You jealous?”

“Well, of course!” Hanthir looked at them like he was speaking to imbeciles. “Who wouldn’t be? By the way, your hammer isn’t really cursed, is it?”

Sygren looked at his cousin, amazed. “Of course it isn’t fucking cursed!”

“Hey! I just wanted to double check! You don’t let anyone touch that thing, so you never know!”

Chuckling, Landelth left his pack with them and started jogging away. Only when they were out of sight behind the outcropping did he realize that he had just made the unconscious decision to trust them with his things. _Guess risking your lives together can do that._ He also admitted to himself that they seemed like good enough people. And Hanthir and Sygren made him smile, so that helped ease his mind around them. And Pehril, well, he still had to make up his mind about Pehril. 

The wizard had already proved that he had at least some utility and had demonstrated his courage when he decided to intervene and speak with the ogre, rather than watch the others butcher it in its sleep. Yet he was shaken by killing a vicious, immoral creature more than Landelth would have liked. He could understand it, yes, but he was worried that Pehril would freeze if they had to fight another intelligent creature. 

_“Intelligence” being entirely subjective in this last case anyhow._

Landelth came to the nearest farm he had seen from the road and inquired after the dead woman. For better or worse, these people had been her relatives and knew where she, her husband, and their teenaged sons lived. After a bit of coaxing, Landelth managed to bring the man of the house out to the ogre’s camp with a wheelbarrow, lacking anything more dignified. The wind blew west, in from the sea, and when the man caught a whiff of what they were approaching, he wrinkled his nose and shook his head.

“Not exactly hygienic, this one, was he?” he asked, trying to make light of the situation.

“Hey, at least this one bathed,” Landelth said. “It just happened to be in one of the worst spots it could have possibly chosen.”

It looked like the leathery farmer was about to make another quip when they rounded the rocks and he got a look at the oversized corpse. Between its size and the multitude of wounds all over it, there was plenty to take in. Oddly enough, though, he seemed less moved by the sight of his dead sister-in-law. He turned a little green when he saw how half of her was missing and that some pieces on the inside were spilling out, but he made no comment and even refused Landelth’s attempts to help load her into the wheelbarrow.

“She’s family,” the man explained. “I wouldn’t expect you to do this for us.” He scooped the body up, tipping the abdomen toward the sky as if holding a cup that he did not want to slop. He made a point of not looking at the ragged intestine trailing in the dirt as he loaded the body into the wheelbarrow. Landelth did his best not to grimace at the smell, as things shifted and various gasses and odors were released. “Besides, you’ve already done us a fair service by getting some vengeance for her on that  _thing_ .” He spat on the ogre, the globule splattering into one of the bloody craters that Hanthir had blown open. “I’ll go and comfort her boys. Can’t expect my brother to do that. Always had a fucking rock where his heart was supposed to be. Never too loving with the woman. Not a bad husband, just not a good one. Expect he’ll only start to miss her when there’s no—” He stopped himself, shaking his head. “Damn it, I’m blabbering.” He turned and offered his hand for Landelth to shake, then thought better of it. “I’m sorry to have put you through that trouble. If you or your friends need a place to stay, you’re welcome to stay in my family’s barn.” He glanced away, embarrassed. “Sorry there isn’t any room in the house.”

Landelth shook his head, offering a small smile. “Thank you, but we’re from town. Just on our way to the forest. Figure out what’s happened to let the monsters through.”

The man brightened at that. “That so? Well, good! We lock up at nights as is, but we’ll be sleeping easier if we know there aren’t none of them bastards that can tear your walls down prowlin’ around.”

“We’ll do our best,” Hanthir said, appearing from behind Landelth and handing him the now clean arrows. “We would suggest that you and your family set watches, though, day and night. We don’t know how many other creatures have come through and it may take some time to hunt them all down once we set things straight again.

Landelth blinked, not bothering to hide his surprise that flippant, goofy Hathir would offer sound, serious advice. Landelth reminded himself that the man had been in an army for some time, but even so, the images did not want to reconcile in his mind. 

“Right. We’ll do just that.” The farmer nodded, furrowing his brow in thought. “Could shore up the roof, put someone up there to watch. Maybe make a window in the attic space… It’ll get damned cold in the winter, though.”

“Are you and the others ready?” Landelth asked Hanthir.

Hanthir nodded. “Yeah. Pehril’s on his feet again. Hasn’t said too much, but said he’s okay to keep going.” 

“Good. Sooner we move, sooner we figure this mess out.” He looked back to the farmer. “If you’re going back in the direction of your farm, we can walk with you if you like.”

“‘ppreciated, but my brother’s more south than west. Gotta double back along the road.”

“You sure you want to be by yourself when there are trolls and gods know what else around?” 

“Trolls?” That seemed to give him pause. “That’s, uh… That’s news…” He looked over his shoulder at the woman’s corpse. “Shit. She’ll stink up the barn something awful if she’s not buried. Could attract more creatures.” He growled. “Damn it. Sharri probably should’ve liked to be buried at her home or the temple, but my farm’s going to have to do.” He spat again. “Shit. Hope her boys don’t hold it against me. All right, I’ll go with you. Again, really ‘ppreciate what you’re doing for us, ‘specially since you’re not guards or anything. Don’t have to.”

“You’re welcome. This is my home though too.”

“The guards are busy hunting the creatures down,” Hanthir pointed out. “They’re better equipped for a straight fight like that anyhow. Probably.”

Landelth nodded, fetching his bag from the ground. “If you see them, they could likely use whatever help you can give. With any luck, they’ve already found and killed the trolls.”

“Gods willing,” the farmer grunted as he lifted the wheelbarrow. He glanced down and saw that some of the woman’s entrails were still trailing in the dirt. “Shit.” Before he could put down the barrow, though, a shimmering golden light appeared, coalescing into a long-fingered, opaque hand that lifted the organs from the ground and gently deposited them into the bucket. They turned to find Pehril moving his fingers to direct it. 

Landelth groaned. “You couldn’t have done that  _before_ I starting rooting through the ogre’s shit?”

Pehril winced apologetically. “Sorry. I didn’t think about it.” 

Landelth sighed. “It’s all right.” He gave a wry grin. “Just haven’t had the—” He stopped himself from saying “guts” in front of the farmer. “—the courage to sniff my fingers since.” He chuckled as Pehril made another face. “Come on. We should get going.”

“About time!” Sygren threw up his arms and started marching past them, forcing the others to hurry and catch up.

Though most of them were glad to be moving again, the group soon fell silent, the constant rattling of the wheelbarrow on the dirt road stealing any levity. They arrived at the farm without incident and, after the farmer gave his thanks once more, they were off again. It was only another twenty minutes before they reached the forest’s edge.

Landelth had stalked those woods enough times that they were almost comfortable to him. He knew the road and its branches, he knew the deer paths, where to find water, and where to avoid a mother bear with a bellicose temper. He even had a few of his own caches of supplies hidden here and there. Although he never made the mistake of feeling at ease in the wilderness, Fandír’s Forest could have made a home for him if he were pressed. Now, though, he peered into the trees with trepidation, scanning the undergrowth and treetops alike for movement or any out of place shapes or colors. Perhaps not too different from how he normally treaded, but now he worried that there might be something lurking within that would deceive even his practiced senses.

“So are we going in or not?” Sygren had his arms crossed, finger tapping his armor. 

Landelth felt an urge to move ahead for fear of inconveniencing or irritating anyone. Despite everything else, he was still a person. Direct pressure and expectations still managed to sway him every now and then, much as he hated to admit it. He forced himself to take a breath and resolve himself again. “Give me a second.”

“He knows this place better than us,” Hanthir noted in his defense. “Let’s just follow his lead. That’s what the constable said to do anyhow.”

“I’m inclined to agree,” Pehril said.

Sygren rolled his head back. “Ugh. Fine.”

Landelth could not tell if Sygren was genuinely irritated or just moaning for fun, but the others’ vote of confidence let him refocus. A little more sure, he finally spoke. “I don’t see anything yet. Come on.” He stepped forward and waved for the others to follow.


	5. Have a Care for the Bear

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The group encounter a bear with a rather... vibrant coat, yet another oddity caused by whatever is happening around Fandír.

They had only been in Fandír’s Forest for fifteen minutes when Landelth raised a hand, slowing the others to a halt.

“What’s the—” Sygren began to say before Hanthir reached up to cover his mouth. Sygren wrenched his face away, irritated, but stubborn as he was, he realized what his cousin had meant and kept his silence this time.

He watched Landelth, expecting him to move, but the young man did not so much as lower is hand for nearly a minute. Only then did he slowly turn his head to the side, scanning what looked to Sygren like a normal forest. At the woodland’s edge, he had mostly been moaning to goad a reaction from someone, just to satisfy that little peevish part of himself that liked to annoy people, but now he was genuinely starting to lose his patience.

Sygren was about to say something when Landelth let his hand drop and quickly retrieved his bow string from a pouch, taking a few careful steps back toward the others. “I know this doesn’t sound very helpful,” he whispered, “but something’s nearby. Not sure what, but it’d probably be smart to get your weapons ready.”

“What makes you say that?” Pehril asked, his voice so soft as to be barely audible.

“The birds stopped singing and I don’t hear anything in the underbrush,” Landelth said. “That’s not normal.” He hesitated. “I can also… sense something else. Just not sure what, which bothers me. Usually can get a feel for what something is if it doesn’t belong, but now…” He trailed off, shaking his head as he heaved to string his hefty bow. “I don’t know. It just… well, it doesn’t belong and I don’t know why.” When no one responded, he looked back to see their incredulous expressions. “What?”

“Um, how can you sense these things and… why?” Pehril asked, sounding like he was trying to be as tactful as possible.

“It’s something my old teacher trained me to do,” Landelth explained, averting his eyes and looking a little embarrassed. “Can sort of tap into the magic in nature. Feel things like currents or ripples in a pond, or see where someone’s dropped blood in a stream or put smoke in the wind. Only know how to pick out certain things, though. Too complicated to identify all of them.”

The others continued to stare. Sygren was just as surprised at the others, but watching Landelth’s shyness and seeing how confident and normal he had seemed talking about it at first inclined him to think that the other half-elf might be sincere. Maybe misguided or dumb, but sincere. Besides, he had heard of druids and other priests and holy warriors being similarly attuned to the natural world, so why not this person?

“Right…” Pehril finally resumed. “And you think this thing doesn’t ‘belong’ here?”

Landelth shrank a little further. “Uh, yeah. Sorry, I know it sounds weird. It’s just that’s what my teacher showed me how to sense. His whole life was dedicated to hunting things that didn’t belong on our plane of existence and making sure they didn’t hurt anybody or upset the natural order.” He paused, evaluating their hesitancy. “Uh, sorry, but you guys know there are other worlds connected to ours, right?”

Hanthir nodded. “Oh yeah, we get that.”

Pehril blinked. “Really?  _ You _ get that?”

Hanthir shrugged. “Well, yeah.”

“Why would a random soldier know anything about extra-planar theory?!”

“I mean, I’ve just sort of come across it a few times. Not that uncommon, you know?”

“Okay,” Sygren said, letting his volume rise to an almost normal level so that he could let his exasperation show without breaking the quiet. “So after all of that, is there anything  _ useful _ that you can tell us, Landelth?” His impatience was genuine, but getting back on topic also saved his cousin and him from a potentially awkward conversation.

Landelth looked away, focusing on some point deeper in the trees. “Yeah. It’s not quite a half mile that way and if it doesn’t belong in this world, then at that distance I should have sensed it before we even entered the forest.”

“So… is this something that we should avoid or something that we should check out?” Hanthir asked, looking at everyone.

“Well, does it have to do with finding the pegasus-unicorn thing?” Sygren asked.

“ _ Sharidin _ ,” Landelth corrected, shooting Sygren an impatient look, “should know about it already, since this is his domain. But if it’s something that he cannot drive out by himself, then maybe he needs our help.”

“Or maybe he  _ doesn’t _ know about it yet?” Pehril offered. “If it’s hard for you to sense, then perhaps Sharidin has a similar problem. He might be hunting it as well.”

“Either way,” Hanthir said, “sounds to me like it’s worth investigating. And who knows?,” he added in an excited undertone with a childish grin. “It could be cuddly!”

“Hanthir, I  _ really _ doubt that,” Sygren said, which elicited a soft cackle from his cousin. “Can we stop whispering now, though?”

“I don’t know,” Landelth said as sarcastically as his hushed voice would allow. “Do you want to find out just how good this thing’s hearing is?”

Sygren grimaced. “Okay. Point taken. But can we at least get started? The nature walk’s nice, but it’s getting old.”

“We’ve only been here for—!” Landelth rolled his eyes. “Never mind. I can scout ahead, see what it is. I’ll probably be a lot quieter than you guys.” He glanced meaningfully at Sygren’s scale armor, which scraped together even as Sygren shrugged.

“Fine by me.”

“Actually,” Pehril ventured, “I would feel a lot safer in these woods if everyone was together. We can watch each others’ backs better.”

Hanthir nodded. “Yeah, I’m with him. Also, don’t want our guide to get stuck out there by himself if something attacks him. I like the woods, but I’d probably want to leave eventually…”

“Then if we’re all going together, it’s okay if I just get going then!” Cutting the debate short, Sygren marched in the direction that Landelth had pointed, grumbling under his breath, and soon found himself nearly walled in by thorns and tangled underbrush. Trying to pick his way through and around it, he watched Landelth walk ahead and around where he was caught, seemingly unhampered, and saw everyone else follow the same path. Landelth cast a bored look that seemed to say “You’re doing this to yourself” as he moved on. Hanthir saw his cousin’s predicament, took his own turn to roll his eyes, doubled back, and showed Sygren the path, hurrying to catch up with the others. Considering Sygren’s equipment, the process was not exactly silent. However, he was so accustomed to the sound of his own armor and heavy footsteps that he could not understand why Landelth kept turning back and gesturing for him to be more quiet, which likewise put him in a fouler mood.

By the time Sygren finally realized how loud he was being, he was in too much of a huff to blame himself and was so preoccupied with being annoyed at Landelth that he did not understand why they had stopped until someone spoke up.

“Uh,” Pehril began, staring ahead, “why is that bear purple?”

That got Sygren’s attention. He raised his gaze from his feet and peered over the others’ shoulders to see…  _ Well, I guess it’s a bear?, _ he finally conceded. Standing about thirty feet away, a generously muscled ursine creature stood, vigorously rubbing its flank against the rough bark of a tree.

Landelth stared, agape. “Um, honestly Pehril? I was hoping you could tell me.”

Staring at the fur, which had been turned a vibrant shade of violet, Sygren noticed a large, darker pattern on its fur that, after a moment, he recognized as a heart. It did not look like it had been branded, but was as much a part of the fur as the purple was. “Did someone pick up a whole bear and dump it in a vat of dye?” he asked, voicing the only explanation that came to mind. Even as he spoke, though, the heart he was looking at distorted, rippling and changing colors as it appeared to shift over the bear’s pelt to its haunches where it resolved into a clump of multi-colored stripes. “Okay, never mind. It’s now got a rainbow on its ass.” He was so preoccupied and confused that he forgot his irritation with Landelth. “Did some wizard screw something up?”

Pehril shook his head. “Hey, your guess is as good as mine at this point. Landelth, is that what you’ve been sensing?”

Landelth nodded slowly, eyebrows furled as he likely tried to reconcile what he was seeing and feeling. “Yes… Yeah, I’m pretty sure it is. Give me a moment.” He stepped away, circling around the “bear” until he was almost on its other side. If it noticed him, it did not care, too preoccupied with scratching. Coming back, Landelth said “Yeah, that’s definitely what I was sensing, but I don’t understand why it looks that way. Everything about it’s just a normal brown bear except that it’s, well…  _ purple. _ ” He looked around at the others. “Any of you seen a purple bear before?”

“Um, I don’t think we’d be having this conversation if any of us had,” Sygren pointed out. “So, is it dangerous? You said you sense things that are dangerous to the world or some sort of perversion, right?”

“Yeah, but it doesn’t seem to be bothering anyone. Normal bear would’ve noticed us by now. Most of the kinds of monsters my teacher and I tracked would attack whenever they see something they think they can kill.” Despite saying this, he had not let the “bear” leave his sight. “Still, I don’t feel comfortable leaving it alone until we know more about it.”

“Who cares?” Sygren asked, gesturing to the creature. “What’s it going to do? Leave a purple stain on the tree?”

“I don’t know,” Landelth said, voice heating up as he struggled to keep from turning and glaring at Sygren. “That’s the point. If I don’t know what it can do, I don’t know how it’ll effect the rest of the forest.” Before Sygren could protest again, Landelth pointed out “And if Sharidin hasn’t kicked it out, it means either that the creature is benign, it’s hidden from him, or that it’s too dangerous for Sharidin to face. If it’s the third one, I  _ definitely _ don’t want to leave it alone.”

“Then let’s just kill it and get going already!” Sygren suggested, though he honestly did not feel especially inclined to kill the bear. He mostly said it just to prompt the others to get moving or at least decide on something. Regardless, Hanthir gave him a look that asked Sygren to be less aggressive and, even though Landelth was facing away, Sygren could hear the stranger half-elf pull a strained, steadying breath through his nose.

“Pehril,” Landelth said, pointedly ignoring Sygren, “is there anything else that you can tell us about it?”

“Um, well, I could try to figure out what kind of magic is affecting it,” he suggested tentatively. “I could do it right away, but if we have the time, I’d prefer to take an extra ten minutes. Keeps me from burning out my connection to magic.”

“Like that thing you did before talking to the ogre?” Hanthir asked.

“Similar. It will take about as long.”

“Oh my god,” Sygren groaned. “We’re seriously going to sit here for ten minutes watching this thing rub its ass just to find out that the purple bear is magical?”

“No,” Landelth said, voice becoming increasingly strained, “we are going to wait while he does that and in the meanwhile you’re going to figure out if the animal’s been cursed somehow. You use magic and you’re a healer, right? That something you can do?”

“Um, I mean, sure? Maybe?” Sygren hesitated, thinking. “Curses are kinda weird. Can’t always detect them and even if you can, it's not always easy to remove them.” He grimaced. “Aaaaaand I also can’t do the spell that removes general curses.”

“Why not?” Pehril asked, genuinely curious, so far as Sygren could tell.

“I’m just not that good yet. Still need to learn more.”

“Oh…” Pehril nodded. “Kind of like being a wizard, then.” He gave Sygren an appraising look. “I’m guessing your magic doesn’t come from nature, so where does it come from? A god? Your heritage?”

“It comes from Olidammara, yeah.”

Pehril blinked. “Olida-who?”

“He’s pretty much the god of parties,” Hanthir supplied. “Not sure why this boring guy chose to worship him, but here we are.”

“Excuse you!” Sygren said, feigning offense. This was something that came up regularly and the response was just as routine, regardless of nearby chromatically aberrant fauna.

Perhaps the response was a little too enthusiastic, however, as the bear stopped its scratching and whirled around toward them. Now that it was facing them, Sygren saw that its eyes had gone wider than any bear’s should and that an image of a bright yellow sun was overlapping part of its forehead. It’s lips pulled back from its teeth as it stood on its hind legs, exposing a large, round white patch on its belly as it started to lumber toward them in an awkward, rolling gait. As it did, Sygren got the distinct impression that the thing was smiling, like a happy dog, but in the same moment he very much doubted that it was looking for affection. “Uh, it’s coming this way,” he said. “What’re we doing?”

“I’ve got one more idea,” Landelth said, putting down his bow and stepping forward with his hands to the side, showing that he held nothing. As the bear wobbled forward on two legs, Sygren watched Landelth’s back as he pulled something from beneath his clothing and muttered a phrase that Sygren could not hear. As he did, the bear staggered to a stop, wavering on its feet as its unnaturally wide eyes lost focus and its head cocked to the side. 

Then it twitched. 

Then it huffed, shivered, shook as if seizing, and roared before lunging toward Landelth. 

“Didn’t work!” the half-elf shouted as he ripped his swords from his belt and dodged to the side. “It did  _ not _ work!”

The bear fell forward, swinging its huge, stained paws down on top of Landelth with all of the creature’s weight behind it. Rather than jumping back, though, as Sygren had expected, Landelth swept his leg forward and to the side, sliding past the bear as it toppled, drawing his two blades against the bear’s hide as he went. The two cuts were shallow, more likely a nuisance than an injury, but his momentum carried him around the bear’s back, where he stepped out to face the beast again and whipped his arms down in four swift slashes along its hind quarters and the back of its leg before he retreated, just in time for the beast to wheel about and rake at him with a claw. The smaller movement was much faster than its initial attack, but Landelth was already out of range.

It lashed out with its other claw, pursuing Landelth, who could not cover as much ground as the bear could with its huge steps. Before the blur of purplish fur could fully extend and reach Landelth, though, the bear’s slashed rear leg buckled and slipped out on the ground, forcing the bear to slam down its paw to keep from plowing its muzzle into the dirt. It only granted Landelth a moment’s reprieve to circle around its flank again, though, as the bear roared and turned to follow him.

Shaking himself from the display, Sygren ripped his hammer from his back and, hollering, charged forward. Taking the haft in both hands, he wound up, torquing his thick, muscled, onyx body and swung with all of his might. Perhaps the bear had seen him coming or was simply lucky, but it stumbled just far enough that the spiked hammer’s head glanced off of its ribs, tearing out a hunk of fur and cracking the bones rather than caving them in. Still hounding Landelth, who continued to swipe at the bear and leave sharp wounds whenever it was off balance or overextended itself, the bear did not see the bolt of crackling energy shoot from Hanthir’s hand. It punched into the discolored hide, the black energy a momentary contrast against the vibrant pelt before dissipating to reveal the bloody fats and tissues that the blast had laid bare.

“What in all the hells did you do?!” Sygren shouted to Landelth, who practically leapt to the side as the bear launched forward, slashing with both sets of claws in a ferocious barrage that Landelth could only just stay out of reach of. Sygren swung again, this time his hammer slamming into the bear’s fluffy bob tail, hoping to distract it long enough for Landelth to get his feet under him. Sygren had no idea that a bear could move so quickly and guessed that if so much as one of those claws even clipped Landelth, he would be thrown off kilter and quickly wrestled to the ground, where even his hardened leather and metal plates would not save him. With that solid blow, though, Sygren could feel the tailbone crunch and crack beneath the thick skin. The bear roared again, its throaty scream warbling in pain as it gave another swing at Landelth before turning its wide eyes and grinning maw on Sygren.

“I cast a spell!” Landelth called with his moment to breathe. “It usually let’s me talk to animals, but they never attack right…”

The rest of what he said was lost to Sygren who stared as the bear stepped toward him. Bluish blood seeped from a gash that Landelth had left on its muzzle. It slid down and mixed with multihued saliva to drip from the bear’s fangs and spatter on the forest floor. Even that, though, could not have drawn Sygren’s gaze from the bear’s enormous, staring eyes. As he watched, they began to… waver. The boundaries of the irises and pupils warped and blurred as blues and yellows and pinks spilled into and overtook their previous colors; paints dropped into a pool of water to swirl and mingle. 

Sygren did not even realize that his jaw was slack until he felt it wrench the other way as his body tried to leave it hanging in the air when the bear slammed one paw against his side. Claws scratched at and caught on the scaled armor, tearing a piece free before Sygren crashed to the ground. His shoulder jammed against an exposed rock, sending a shock of pain through him. Clutching at his hammer, he tried to scramble onto his hands and knees, hoping that the shield still strapped to his back would deflect the worst of whatever was coming next. As he twisted to roll onto his belly, though, the fog in his head was replaced by a rending, tearing sensation as colors and cacophonous screeches exploded inside of his eyes and brain, drowning out even the bellowing ache in his shoulder. It was all he could do to keep his vision focused enough to see the animal bearing down on him, jaws ready to snap around his head.

There was a flash of scintillating light that Sygren thought was another fragment of whatever was happening to his vision. Something detonated; an explosion of sound that left Sygren’s ears ringing as black spots replaced the fading bursts of color in his eyes. He finally managed to rise onto his knees and his sight cleared enough to see the bizarre bear shaking its head and wobbling on its feet. 

As it struggled to reorient, another of Hanthir’s black bolts tore away part of its face, the magical projectile knocking the bear’s head aside to show Sygren an exposed jawbone where the lips had been blown apart. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw a pair of leather boots topped with steel grieves run forward and looked up in time to see Landelth drop the sword in his left hand, grasp the other’s hilt with both hands, and with a sharp, barked cry bring the blade down in a powerful slash with the force of his hips and shoulders united behind it. The blade tore through the purpled hide half a foot behind the bear’s ear, digging deeply into the animal’s neck. The bear grunted and, still wobbling from whatever had caused that burst of sound, could not react as Landelth wrenched the blade free and brought it down again, cutting a deeper gash nearly parallel to the first as the sword split flesh and came free in the one stroke. 

Blood dyed a deep indigo soaked into the bear’s fur as it dribbled out onto the fallen leaves and saturated the dirt. Landelth sprang back, hooked an arm under Sygren’s shoulder, and wrenched him away and to his feet, eliciting a gasp of pain from Sygren as his side and shoulder were jerked about.

The bear reared up and swung its claws through the air in a blind, drunken frenzy while Sygren and Landelth stepped further back, panting. 

The bear soon slowed, growing lethargic. It dropped back to all fours, straining to stay upright while a ferocious roar petered out to a small, unhappy rumble. The bear started making a labored, panting, chuffing sound through its open mouth. A few seconds later, its front legs gave out and it sank to the forest floor, the heavy pelt rippling with fat and muscle while the bear lay down as if curling up to sleep.


	6. The Final Player

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The last protagonist appears before the group, but the meeting (or in some cases "reunion") doesn't go without a hitch.

They all stood still, Sygren, Landelth, Hanthir, and Pehril alike, who had ducked behind an elm for cover. They listened, watching the bear’s sides rise and fall as it heaved in deep, heavy breaths that grew more ragged and shallower each time until, finally, it fell silent and still. 

Drawing himself straight, Landelth extricated himself from Sygren, who found that he was leaning a little more heavily on the half-elf than he had thought, and crept forward. The man’s soft boots made no sound as he navigated the occasional branch and retrieved his second sword from the ground before circling to examine the bear. He stabbed it again in the throat and, after seeing no response, called “It’s dead.” Looking closer, Sygren now saw that Landelth’s hands were trembling, even as he moved to clean and sheath his swords. He frowned, surprised, but made no comment.

“Damn it,  _ really _ ?” a familiar and irritated voice said from the woods to Sygren’s right. He watched Landelth spin and drop into a ready crouch, his blades poised in front of him to parry or strike at a moment’s notice. “Did you guys  _ really _ have to kill it?”

Sygren frowned, moving around a couple of trees for a better look, and found himself staring at Selni. She had her bow strung, but it hung loose in her fingers and all of her arrows were still in their quiver. Her dark brown hair was tied back in a loose ponytail, her blue eyes prominent beneath the kohl painted around them and set against a pale, freckled face framed by a pair of earrings with various feathers dangling from delicately pointed ears.

Hanthir spoke up. “Uh, yeah. We did. It was trying to kill us. And you were just watching the entire time!?”

“Uh, yeah,” she said, as if this were obvious and doing nothing to hide her impatience. “Been following that thing for a couple of days now. Wanted to see what it would do.”

“And then do nothing if it tried to eat us,” Sygren put in. “Great. Thanks, cos.” 

“I knew you’d be fine!”

“Uh…” Sygren gestured to his now battered and dirt encrusted armor, which had a couple blades of grass and leaves poking out from where they had been caught between scales. “Apparently not.”

“Oh, and by the way,” Hanthir said, “you could have shouted for us not to kill it if you cared. Don’t get all pissy with us for fighting in self-defense.”

“Hanthir,” she said, as if talking to a stubborn teenager, “it was a  _ bear _ . You didn’t have to fight it at all.”

“Uh, excuse me,” Landelth interrupted, only just now relaxing and looking a bit less like a startled cat for it, “but who is this?”

“Oh, shit, um…” Hanthir looked between Selni and Landelth a couple times. “Uh, Landelth? This is my twin sister, Selni.”

Landelth took a second to look between them and then look again. “Uh huh.” He made no effort to hide his incredulity. “Right…”

“Not a great joke, Hanthir,” Pehril agreed, finally stepping out from behind his tree. “You two don’t exactly look like twins.”

Hanthir blew a raspberry. “Heck if I know, man! That’s just what our parents told us.”

“Yeah, and apparently I got all of the brains between the two of us.”

“Yeah, but I got all the good looks,” Hanthir shot back with a self-satisfied grin.

Sygren shook his head and walked over to the bear while they bickered, his boots squishing in dirt softened by the bear’s blood. “Guess it doesn’t matter what we did now,” he said, kicking the body. “It’s dead.” He grimaced, both from confusion and pain. “Freakin’ weird though. Something that big shouldn’t move that fast. Not natural.”

“Actually,” Landelth said, trying to avoid sounding condescending or brusque, “pretty much all bears are like that.”

Sygren cocked an eyebrow. “You’re kidding, right?”

“Nope,” he quipped as he wiped off and sheathed his weapons. “They move their paws just as fast as we move ours.” He then doubled back and retrieved his bow from where he had laid it on the ground.

“But we don’t have paws,” Hanthir said, once again adopting the childish voice he reserved for being goofy. “Unless…” he gasped. “You have secret paws?!?!?”

“Holy gods in all the heavens,” Selni groaned. “Give it a rest, Hanthir.”

Hanthir pretended to look perplexed. “But I’m not tired!”

Selni groaned in frustration. Before she could retort, though, Landelth interrupted. “Uh, sorry again,” he said, not quite making eye contact, Sygren noticed, “but didn’t you say you’d been watching it? What exactly did it do while you were watching it? Anything interesting?”

She looked at him like he was trying to prank her. “Um, it’s a big fuchsia bear. Yeah, it didn’t do anything interesting at all.”

“Oh, we were thinking it was actually more violet,” Hanthir said, “but fuchsia works too? I don’t really know what that color is supposed to look like, though.”

“No, fuchsia’s more red than that,” Pehril said. “I think violet’s more appropriate. Maybe a deep lilac?”

Sygren gave them the same look that Selni had given Landelth. “Really? We’re arguing about what color it is?” He winced as his ribs and shoulder reminded him that he had just been effectively punched by a bear. “Okay, give me a second here,” he said, lowering his hammer to the ground. “I think I was so surprised at seeing you that I kind of forgot that I’d been mauled.”

“Oh shit, right!” Landelth exclaimed, scrambling to pull off his backpack. “I’ve got some medical supplies and I know a spell that’ll patch you up some, but it’s mostly for dietary needs, not healing.”

Sygren moved to wave him off then winced as his shoulder twinged. “Forget about it. I’ve got this covered.” He closed his eyes for a moment and, muttering a couple of words under his breath, he felt a change in the surrounding energy. 

The world around him slowed, just long enough for a deep, friendly, familiar voice to murmur in his ear. “We always need someone to put us back together after the party.” Sygren felt his hand tingle with building magic. “Unfortunately, sometimes you’re gonna have a hangover no matter what. Sorry, Sygren.” The world resumed its pace. 

_ What the hell was that supposed to mean? _ he tried to ask, though his thoughts hit a barrier and he knew he was only thinking to himself. Shaking off the confusion, he touched his hand to his side and, despite the layers of metal, leather, and cloth between his hand and his skin, he felt the magic discharge and flow into his body. An itching, shifting sensation made his flesh crawl for just a second as the magic set his bones and muscles back where they belonged and did a little to cement them in place. He even felt a shifting around what he thought might have been his liver, though he had failed to notice that any damage had been done there, and a slight muffling was removed from his hearing. Once the magic subsided and left the worst of his injuries mended, he took an experimental, deep breath, found no pain in doing so, and gave an amused grin. “See?” he lifted and twirled his hammer a couple of times, managing not to grimace as the torn muscles and fragilely knit bones stretched. “Good as new.”

Hanthir frowned. “Hey, Sygren, you’ve really got to use your shield more often. Also, why didn’t you just blast that thing? Or the ogre? I’ve seen you hit things with spears of light before. 

Sygren nearly dropped his spinning hammer. “ _ Really _ ? You’re asking that  _ now _ after  _ two _ fights?”

Hanthir shrugged with a grin. “Hey, we all know I’m a dumbass. Don’t be surprised. Still, though, why hold back? Don’t think you needed to go toe-to-toe with either of them.”

Sygren shrugged, hiding a twinge of embarrassment. “I didn’t get that spell ready for today. Thought that, if we’d be in the woods, I wouldn’t always have a good line of sight. Besides, we’re leading the new guy around,” he said, jerking his thumb toward Pehril who appeared somewhere between embarrassed and indignant at the comment. “So I prepared something else to keep him out of trouble instead.”

Hanthir nodded. “Okay, that’s fair. To be honest though, I don’t think you need to worry too much about keeping this guy safe.” He laughed, turning to Pehril. “In all seriousness, that…  _ thing _ you hit the bear with? Wow! You really like the loud ones, though.”

Sygren blinked at Pehril. “That sound was from you?”

Pehril’s blue cheeks turned indigo as he blushed and Sygren could see the faint indigo stripes in his skin outlined. “Uh, yeah. That was me.”

“That wasn’t the same spell as before, though,” Hanthir observed. Sygren had not exactly been in a position to discern, but he guessed that, if Pehril had used the same spell as he had on the ogre, Sygren would have been a lot worse for the wear.

“Yeah, that was a lot quieter than before,” Landelth said. 

Sygren stared at him in disbelief. “Could’ve fooled me. My ears are still ringing.”

“It was something a bit different,” Pehril explained. “More focused, so the sound didn’t spread as far. Could’ve made it something else, like acid, though.” He shrugged, averting his eyes. “Sound was just the first thing I thought of.”

Hanthir walked over to inspect the bear, as did Sygren, who now saw that there was blood matting the fur around the bears ears, eyes, and nose, aside from the cuts that Landelth had dealt to it. The blood had soaked into and overlapped with a pattern of green and orange sunbursts that had appeared on the bear’s hide during the fight, except that now the pattern showed no sign of shifting or fading. “Well, either way,” Hanthir said, “it worked, so good job!”

“Yeah,” Selni cut in. “And now every animal for half a mile will be scared shitless and won’t come back here for a day.”

Landelth was turned away from Selni, so only Sygren noticed the expression he made which showed how he thought her assessment was at least a little exaggerated. Still, he kept his mouth shut which, in Sygren’s estimation, was pretty wise. _Best to shut up when she gets like this,_ he thought, more as a reminder to himself. 

“What are you even doing here?” Hanthir asked, ignoring her comment.

She looked at him again in disbelief. “Hanthir, I  _ told _ you I was coming to Eliusia before you even left Orava.”

Landelth furrowed his brow. “Orava?” 

“Oravadlunan,” Hanthir replied. “Yeah, it’s a mouthful. That’s where I was stationed until I left the army a few months back. You still haven’t told me why you’re in the middle of the woods,” he said, turning back to Selni.

“Uh, maybe because nearly everyone at home expected me to be married by the age of fourteen? Or that every town or city I go into doesn’t take me seriously because I’m a woman?”

“Okay, yes, but that still doesn’t tell me what  _ you’re _ doing  _ here  _ in this exact spot.”

“I don’t know. I just came south,” she said as if expecting him to already know that too. “Wanted to see what was going on and people talked about this forest being interesting.”

“But you didn’t bring anyone with you,” he observed.

“I didn’t want anyone! The guys would have tried to make a pass at me while we were out here, or worse, and the only women who were comfortable with the forest kept trying to get me to meet their sons or brothers.”

“And did people tell you about big purple bears while they were fishing for a date?” he asked.

“No, Hanthir,” she snapped. “They didn’t.”

As they argued, Sygren glimpsed something moving behind Selni. He focused on the shadowy undergrowth behind her. At first, he was not sure if he was watching the shadows move as leaves shifted in a breeze or whether there was something creeping in the shadows. Then a pair of dark blue eyes reflected the light, shining out of the darkness. A lithe, feline form slinked from the forest, crouching as it prowled toward his cousin. The dull grey fur around its jaws parted to reveal sharp, white fangs.

“Selni! Behind you!” he shouted, throwing up his hand, palm toward the creature, gathering energy. There was no way that he could get there quickly enough to use his hammer. 

Before he could unleash the spell, though, Landelth’s hand tugged Sygren’s arm aside, knocking it down and somehow spinning Sygren nearly off his feet just as Selni, wide eyed, turned and  _ grabbed _ the stalking animal before diving to the side. Sygren whirled back on Landelth, swinging his hammer toward the half-elf stranger with one hand, aiming to knock him aside so that he could get to his cousin.

“Sygren!” Selni shouted from behind the tree. “What the hell?!”

Landelth dodged out the hammer’s range but, noticing that Selni did not sound injured or frantic, Sygren caught the haft with his other hand, arresting its momentum. “Uh, you had a fucking  _ lion _ behind you!” He shouted, running toward the tree. “Where is it?”

“It’s not a lion, you dumbass,” she shouted back. “It’s a leopard. Lions don’t live anywhere near here.” He rounded the tree and found Selni curled protectively around what looked like thirty pounds of predatory cat, stroking and trying to calm it as it wriggled and growled and mewled in a small, high-pitched voice. “Hey!” she snapped. “Step back! You’re scaring him!”

“ _ I’m _ scarring him?” Sygren said, disbelieving as he took a step back. “It looked like it was about to maul you! What was it doing sneaking around back there?”

“It was hiding from  _ you _ .” The leopard’s squirming slowed under her caress. “You know how much noise you guys were making?”

Now that Sygren was not looking for his cousin’s shredded flesh, he noticed that the “leopard” was grey and had only the hints of spots on its fuzzy fur. “Why would a  _ leopard _ be scared of us?”

“Um, maybe it’s scared because it’s a  _ cub _ ? And maybe because anything in its right mind would be freaked out by screaming humans with weapons and exploding, purple bears!”

“Well, are you even sure that’s a leopard? It’s grey and I only see spots if I look sideways and maybe kinda squint at it. Could be something else, if bears are suddenly turning purple.”

“He hasn’t grown into his coat yet. His eyes and fur will change color over the next year or two. Now can you just leave him alone already? He’s still calming down.” Indeed, though the cub had stopped trying to claw his way out of Selni’s arms, he was still wriggling and issuing threatening growls.

Not having an answer for that, Sygren whirled and stalked back toward Landelth, who was holding the others back from approaching. “And what was that for?” he demanded. “You just went and attacked me!”

Landelth, swords sheathed again, put up his hands. “Sorry. Just didn’t want you to hurt it.”

“Oh, so you saw it and  _ didn’t _ try to help my cousin?”

“It wasn’t gonna attack her.”

“And how do you know?”

“Because I was watching it _way_ before you noticed it and I’m _pretty good_ with animals.” Sygren could see Landelth almost physically restrain the heat he wanted to put into his words. He also wanted to point out how “good” Landelth had been with the bear, but he also knew that Landelth was in the right. That did not, however, sooth his temper at the bastard hitting him out of nowhere. 

Instead of taking his frustration out on Landelth, he just threw up his hands in defeat. “Okay! Fine!”

Hanthir moved around Landelth, though still kept a distance from the tree his sister hid behind. “Still, what’re you doing with a leopard, Sis?”

Selni poked her head from behind the tree, a few strands of her now disheveled hair falling across her face and blending in with the rich bark. “I found him about a week ago. He was by himself.” Her head pulled back and Sygren caught some calming, cooing sounds before she spoke again. “I was hoping to find his mother. Probably got separated when something bigger attacked.” She poked her head around the tree again to glare at Sygren. “Or maybe when some asshole freaked him out and he bolted.”

Sygren rolled his eyes. “Seriously? We’re going back to that?”

She appeared, walking toward them, sans leopard. “You  _ scared _ my  _ cat _ !”

“Wait, so it’s  _ yours _ now?” Hanthir asked. “I thought you were trying to get it home.”

“All right, he's not mine. Still, could you guys do me a favor and try to  _ not  _ kill him?”

“I mean, as long as he doesn’t attack us or something, sure.” Hanthir said. “But only if I get to pet him.”

Selni nodded. “Yeah, good luck with that, Hanthir. If you haven’t noticed, he still doesn’t want to come out of hiding after what Sygren just tried.” 

Sygren felt the heat rise to his face, though managed not to say anything.  _ At least I can’t blush, _ he thought.  _ Benefits of weird rock skin… _

__ “Well, now that you do not have a bear to observe, what will you do?” Pehril asked.

Selni looked again at the bear’s corpse. She took a deep breath and sighed, seeming to deflate. “So are there more weird things like that bear in this forest?”

Landelth shook his head. “Don’t know. I’ve been going around these woods for three years now and I’ve never seen anything quite like that. Lots of things have been getting weird in the last few days, though.”

“Like what?”

“Animals giving themselves to slaughter, monsters that normally avoid settlements deciding to live near my town… Found an ogre bathing in the river every day, for example.” 

Selni frowned in disbelief. “Who’s ever heard of an ogre bathing?”

“Anyhow, we’re actually on our way to find the forest’s guardian; see if he’s okay or needs help. We figure he’s our best bet for figuring out what’s happening.”

“Okay…” Selni thought for a moment and, to Sygren’s relief, neither Landelth or Pehril interrupted her. “Mind if I come along?” Pehril frowned and Landelth did his best to hide his mix of surprise and eagerness. Chances were, though, that Sygren was the only one who noticed Landelth’s stifled reaction.

Hanthir looked at Sygren and shrugged. “Yeah, sure, if you feel like it. It’d be nice to catch up too.”

“Might I ask, though,” Pehril began, giving Selni an inquisitive look, “why do you want to come in the first place?”

“Well, this is all pretty cool and, honestly? If things are getting dangerous, it’d probably be better to stick together. Besides,” she said, cocking an eyebrow and a half smile at them, “I should probably make sure you don’t make some rare animal go extinct.” Even Sygren could not quite tell if she was joking or not.

Pehril did not look entirely thrilled, though. “Um, is he going to, uh, bite us? Or anything?” he asked, nodding to the leopard cub. “I really don’t feel comfortable around large animals.”

“Pehril, you’re easily five times its size,” Sygren pointed out. “I’m sure you’ll be fine.”

“Yeah, but animals still make me nervous. Is it going to try to jump on me or lick me or anything?”

“I mean, it’s still a cat, pretty much,” Selni mused, “so probably not? He’s licked me a couple of times and sleeps with me, but that’s probably because I feed him. You’ll be fine.”

Pehril did not look much soothed by her reassurance, but Selni turned away and poked her head back around the tree, resuming her attempts at calming the cat and trying to coax it out. When she finally managed to persuade him to move his head from behind the trees, he still looked read to bolt at any given notice. Gripe and grouch as Sygren might, he had to admit that the fuzz ball was actually pretty cute.  _ Or at least it will be until it turns into a full fledged predator ready to rip my throat out. _ Still, he stayed as still as he could, watching the thing and hoping that the leopard cub would not startle and set Selni laying into him again. Oddly enough, Landelth was pretending not to notice that the cat was there, looking up and away while the others stared at it, Hanthir making little excited noises and going wide eyed as he tried not to clap his hands in excitement. As for Pehril, well, Pehril still looked like he was not exactly ready for so many close encounters with wildlife yet.  _ What else is new? _

As the cub slunk around Selni’s legs, keeping them between it and the others, she asked “So where are we going from here?”

They all looked at Landelth. Sygren noticed him blush a little as he looked into the trees, trying to adopt a serious frown around his ruddy cheeks. “Sharidin typically keeps to himself and makes it pretty much impossible to find him or other animals if he doesn’t want you to. Doesn’t have a set home either. Wanders the forest constantly. Still, finding his tracks will be a good start and he has to drink like any other living thing. I know a clean pond near here. It’s the freshest source of water in nearly eight miles, aside from the river running from the mountains. We’ll give it a look, see if he’s visited it recently.”

“Wow,” Selni said, looking at her family with mock amazement. “Guys, you’ve actually got someone with a little bit of sense with you. That’s a change.” Without waiting for Landelth’s directions, she started walking into the woods away from them, the cub trotting behind. “You coming?”

“Selni, you don’t even know which way to go,” Hanthir said.

“I already saw the pond,” she called over her shoulder. “It’s over this way, right?”

Landelth’s eyebrows rose and he shrugged. “Yeah, actually.” 

“Told you.”

As she went ahead, Sygren heard Landelth mutter something to Hanthir. “So, is she always like this?”

Hanthir sucked in his breath, doing his best to look indecisive. “Uh, yes? Sometimes? I don’t know.”

Landelth sighed. “Great. And now she’s with us. Okay.”

_ You don’t seem to mind looking at her, _ Sygren thought, though a bit unfairly he admitted.

“She’ll probably leave soon,” Hanthir continued. “She’ll get annoyed or bored and want to do something else. Or, if she doesn’t, she’ll calm down. Seriously, she’s great when she’s not pissed off.”

“I feel like the same could be said of most anyone,” Pehril pointed out in an undertone as they moved to follow. 

“Touché.”

“Yeah,” Sygren hedged, “don’t get your hopes up.”

Landelth looked over his shoulder at the bear's corpse. “Just feel bad that we’re leaving that in the woods by itself. Hate killing something and not eating it or using its pelt or anything. Just seems like a waste.”

“Well, if it’s any consolation,” Pehril said, putting a hand on his shoulder, “it’s a big purple bear. It might not even be edible in the first place and the pelt could be horrifically poisonous or something.”

Sygren was taken aback. “Wait, really?”

“I don’t know, but it’s a possibility. Magic can be weird.”

Landelth grimaced. “Yeah, guess you’re right. Best not to gamble with what you put in your mouth if you can help it anyhow. Still, now you’ve got me worrying that something will happen to whatever  _ does _ eat it. We going to have purple wolves running around and lavender ravens living in the trees?”

Hanthir nodded sagely. “That sounds like a very pretty forest.”

Landelth snorted. As they caught up with Selni, Pehril asked “By the way, Landelth: Do you sense anything else around here? Anything like that bear?”

Landelth fell silent, slowing his pace for just a moment, head cocked to the side as if listening. The others stopped to wait for him. Even Selni. “There’s something a few miles from here,” he finally said, pointing to the northwest. “After that bear, though, maybe it’s best to avoid it. At least until we find Sharidin. Can take care of monsters and abominations of nature later.”

“Oh, you can do that too?” Selni asked. This time she seemed genuinely surprised without any of her usual sarcasm. 

“Kill monsters and stuff?”

“No, sense where things are.”

“Oh, that.” Landelth blushed again enough for everyone to see this time. “Right. My old teacher taught me a little bit about connecting to the land. Taught me how some things change how the world feels when they don’t belong.”

“That’s cool. I just always end up finding fairies.”

“Excuse me,” Landelth shook his head as if to clear it. “What?”

“Fairies. Fey. You know. Things from the Fey Wilds?”

“Yeah, I get it, but… why? Those are super rare and usually don’t do any harm. Why would you learn how to hunt them?”

“I didn’t say I was hunting them!” she huffed. “They’re just fun to find and sometimes talk to.” She paused, reconsidering. “Then again, some of them can be real assholes or just plain dangerous. Those ones, yeah. Those I’d help put down.”

“I’ve never met someone who used that kind of awareness just to find something to chat with,” Landelth confessed. “My teacher and the others I’ve met who do this always use it for hunting and guarding wherever they live.”

“That sounds kind of boring. Useful, but boring.”

“Really? Have you ever tracked down a phase spider? You know, a teleporting spider the size of a bull? Trust me, those are _far_ from boring.” 

“Sounds cuddly!” Hanthir added.

“That sounds like the antitheses of cuddly,” Pehril said, horrified.

“Yeah, it’s really not,” Landelth confirmed with an emphatic shake of his head.

For the next fifteen minutes, he and Selni chatted softly about things they had found in the wild as the cub kept pace. Oddly enough, while it made sure to keep Selni between himself and Landelth, the cub did not seem as keen on keeping a measured distance from him as it did from Sygren and the others. Their chatting was mostly just conversational, but sometimes with an undercurrent of amiable one-up manship. They even each laughed a little at one point as Hanthir butted in with a comment.  _ How does she always make friends and then manage to piss her family off at the same time? _ Sygren wondered.  _ Eh. If she’s hanging around Hanthir and me, chances are she won’t be so fun for Pehril or Landelth to be around anyway. _ He guessed that they’d be together for two, maybe three days before Selni grew sick of them and went off on her own again.  _ Maybe she can touch up the painting on the inside of my shield before she goes. _


	7. Family Reunion

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Selni tags along with the group and tries to gauge the two strangers while catching up with her brother and cousin.

Selni’s sense of direction was nearly impeccable after spending so long wandering the wilderness. Landelth may have been more intimately familiar with this forest, and thus was the one guiding them along the easiest paths, but she was certain that she could have returned to that pond without much trouble. As for Landelth himself, this new guy that her family had taken up with seemed friendly enough, though he didn’t make much eye contact with her. At first she thought that he was simply staying alert to their surroundings, which he was, but she finally decided that he was actually just a kind of nervous person, despite his confident speech. His mannerisms usually had him looking away from who he was speaking to, fidgeting with something, or listening more often than contributing to a conversation. 

_Spent too long in the woods or just never learned how to look someone in the eye?_ she wondered. Still, the leopard cub seemed almost comfortable around him, though it skittered away from the others the moment it noticed them getting too close. She figured that was a good sign. She could not exactly count on the cub’s judgement, but it did not see Landelth as much of a threat. It was a start.

Still, the chances of Selni running into her brother and cousin in the middle of the forest must have been a thousand to one or less. She had actually been on her way to Zizilabarak to see how they were doing. Last her father had heard, that was where they were journeying to. She had already decided to leave the town that she had been living near for the last couple of months and moved south along the road, intending to catch up. She just didn’t want to mention that she had intended to find her family, though. It would make Hanthir worry that he should be hosting her somehow and would inflate Sygren’s ego even further. 

Looking over her shoulder at Sygren, he was considerably larger than she had last seen him three years before. Yes, he had put on a bit more around the waist, but he was also noticeably bulkier under his armor.  _Since when does he wear armor and carry weapons anyway?_ she thought, turning back to the road, listening with half an ear to something Landelth said.  _Then again, since when does he go hunting or anything like this? Or even leave town?_ He had talked about joining a college or taking an apprenticeship somewhere away from his village, but had never actually done it that she was aware of. Then again, she had no idea what he had been doing for the last few years. She resolved to ask him about it.  _And what’s with the mask on his head?_ The silvery, smiling, bearded face of steel seemed a little incongruous against his normally serious or annoyed expressions. She had painted a face like that onto the inside of his shield a long time ago, but seeing it on his head was disconcerting, like seeing a wolf dance on its hind legs.  _Or seeing a purple bear…_ Then again, she also had a bunch of memories of him pulling little pranks and playing tricks on her, Hanthir, and Sygren’s own brother and sister.  _Okay, so maybe it’s not that out of the ordinary. Still, looks weird on him._

As for the blue guy, whose name she had failed to catch, well, if Landelth was a little awkward, the tall blue man seemed to be walking on eggshells. Practically everything about him screamed discomfort which, in the wild, would have made him a target for some predators if he had been on his own. He didn’t even seem especially well equipped for camping either, carrying only one dagger and a pack that was too small to hold a tent or many tools. She would have to ask what he was doing out here once she got the chance. Right then, though, she could see a shimmer of light through the trees and was soon back to the little moss-framed kettle pond that she had filled her water skin at that morning. Not even thirty feet across, she had expected it to be overgrown with algae, lilies, or bugs. Despite that, the water was fresh and clean, if a little grassy to the taste, and had not even required boiling or any other cleansing.

The bear had come this way, stoping for a drink of its own, and in following, Selni had noticed the tracks of over a dozen individual creatures that had likewise visited for refreshment. At the time, though, she had been too preoccupied with the peculiarly pigmented animal to have paid any mind to them. Now, after Landelth had filled her in that they were tracking some sort of unicorn (which he had said a little too casually for her to believe at first), she searched for hoof prints in the soft, sandy dirt.

“So how does following a weird bear and coming along with us help you find that leopard’s mom?” She looked over her shoulder to find Sygren watching her. The cub still made a point of staying far from him, though Sygren did not seem especially interested in approaching it. Hanthir, on the other hand, had already scared it into the bushes three times by trying to pet it.

_At least the blue guy’s not hiding from it anymore._ “Honestly? It doesn’t.” She sighed, looking at the cub which had curled up on a rock by the water’s edge so that it could watch everyone as its golden, black-splotched fur soaked up the late afternoon sun. “I just have no idea where to look. Leopards are hard to track and don’t often make dens in caves or other obvious places. They sleep in trees and their paw prints are hard to notice in the dirt and I don’t know how to spot their territory.” 

She had found this cub near the forest’s northern edge, where it had been hiding and shivering in a hollow between tree roots. Its fur had turned scraggly from malnutrition and it had been too weak and sick to even run from her when she had approached its hole. In the week and a half that it had taken to get it back on its feet, she had fed it from her own rations at first, afraid to leave it lest some other predator eat it. When rations had run low, she then carried it wrapped in a cloth against her chest like a baby while she hunted for it, much to the cub’s initial terror and, later, indignation. It was a type of cat, after all, and the ignominy of being carried by a human was not so easily ignored. 

As she hunted, she had gradually searched in a tight spiral through the forest, with the cub’s hole as the center, hoping to find its mother. By the time her spiral’s edge was over a mile from where she had started, the cub had begun slowly padding beside her on their own and Selni had seen only one other male leopard, which had disregarded them.

“Right now, I’m just taking shots in the dark,” she admitted.

“But we can see in the dark!” Hanthir called, overhearing from where he was “helping” Landelth. She kept herself from smiling and ignored him. 

“So this thing really could be with you for a while.”

“ _He_ ,” she emphasized “still needs to learn how to hunt and fight before he can be on his own.” She wasn’t sure exactly how she could teach a leopard to do that, but figured that instinct had to count for something. “Maybe I’ll find another female who will adopt him. It’s a stretch, but probably my best bet.”

“Sharidin knows everything about this forest,” Landelth said from his side, a little hesitant. “Chances are, he know where you can find the mother or somewhere he’ll be safe.”

Selni looked around at the smattering of deer, rabbit, boar, and other prints surrounding them. “If we can find him at all.”

“We will,” Landelth said. “Probably in the next day or two.”

“What makes you say that?” Pehril asked from where he stood stock still, probably afraid of confusing the tracks with his own.

“Because I found Sharidin’s tracks and he was here probably only yesterday. Unless there are suddenly wild horses living in the woods that I didn’t know about.” He paused. “Granted, with the way things are going, I’m not ruling out the possibility.” 

Selni was surprised.  _That was quick._

“Then why are you still looking around in the dirt?” Sygren asked. “Let’s go.”

“I’m just making sure that nothing else was following Sharidin as well. From here, though, it doesn’t look like anything was stalking him and I don’t think he was limping. Probably not injured.” He stood up. “Whatever that thing is I sensed is in a different direction from where the tracks go, too. Hopefully we’ll also be able to avoid whatever that is until we’re done.” He pulled out one of his own water skins and held it under the water. “I’d like for us to keep going for another hour at least before we set up camp. Either way, it’d be a good idea to fill up here before we go. Don’t mind the taste. It’s perfectly safe.”

“‘Taste?’” Pehril asked. 

“Just a bit of a flavor from some of the plants growing in the water. Nothing dangerous.” Landelth paused, pulling his hand and skin back out. “Well, unless whatever’s messing with the animals is also affecting the water.” 

Selni felt herself go pale. “Uh, I already drank from that.”

“Well, you’re probably fine then, but better safe than sorry, right?” He looked over his shoulder. “Pehril? Can you take a look at this? See if there’s anything magical going on here?”

“Sure thing.” As he sat down at the water’s edge, he added as an afterthought “Should we have checked out that bear, by the way?”

Landelth slapped himself on the forehead. “Damn it! I forgot we were going to do that! Is it too late to check?”

“It might be.” Pehril began to slowly move his hands through the air, circling as if framing a small window. “Lots of magics that get attached to living things fade if the subject dies. Might be worth checking out, but the patches on its fur had stopped moving when we left, so chances are the magic had stopped working and we won’t find much.” Landelth sighed and left Pehril to his devices as the man started muttering a series of incantations. Sygren took off his armor and sat down, running his fingers over the places where scales had torn free while muttering a spell over and over, repairing damage and reaffixing plates that had come loose.

“He’ll be doing that for another ten minutes, I think,” Hanthir said, walking to Selni’s side. “Might as well relax a bit.”

Selni nodded and went to sit next to the cub, which eyed her as she approached, but did not stir. When Hanthir moved to follow, though, the cub tensed and the fur on its neck lifted as it let out a little growl. Hanthir put up his hands, apologized, and went to chat with Landelth instead.

“I also forgot to ask,” Landelth said when he saw Hanthir approach, “where did you say you were stationed? It rings a bell, but I can’t place it.”

“Orava. It’s a small town in the Namel province of Siralhan.”

“Namel? Seriously?” Landelth grinned. “I was raised in the next province over, near Inbeltarion, if you’ve heard of that town.”

Hanthir gaped. “You’re kidding me, right?” He grabbed Landelth’s shoulders, still slack jawed. “I was born in Inbeltarion! We lived there until we were twelve! How old are you?”

Landelth eyed Hanthir, probably trying to gauge if he was joking. “I’m twenty-four. Why?”

“Oh my stars. Selni!” he nearly shouted, causing the cub to twitch in surprise. “You hear that? He’s only a year younger than us  _and_ he’s from our hometown!”

“Yeah, Hanthir,” she said. “I’m pretty sure everyone for about a mile probably just heard that.”

“That’s amazing, though, isn’t it?!” He turned back to Landelth. “I loved that place! It was way better than moving to our grandpa’s farm when he needed help running it.”

“You were a farmer?”

“Kind of? My grandpa’s a healer, but he inherited a big farm from his dad. Needed help managing it and it paid better for my dad than being a scribe.”

“Being a farmer paid more?”

“Our grandpa’s got over twenty workers that our dad managed,” Selni explained. “Lots of people to deal with and he always liked medicine better.”

“Huh. Funny coincidences all around. My mother is a physician too and my father was a small time lawyer. Not much work for that last part in a town of only five thousand people, though. Not like where we used to live in Syranbelse.” He shrugged. “At least, that’s what he said. Don’t remember the city, actually.”

“Why did you leave then?”

“The mayor in Inbeltarion was starting a proper hospital and offered my mother a better pay than what she was getting in Syranbelse. Hard to ignore and Syranbelse was apparently not the best town. Lots of people weren’t happy with how many elves lived there and we got smugglers and other criminals from Meraosia. Made things kind of dangerous and Inbeltarion was supposed to be safer.”

“There’s nothing magical about the water,” Pehril said before they could keep talking. “Should be safe unless something’s poisoned it.”

“The animals around here are healthy enough,” Selni said. “Don’t think it’s contaminated and, again, I’d probably be sick already if it was.”

Hanthir nodded. “Shall we, then?”

“Please,” Sygren groaned as he finished restoring his equipment. “I’m thirsty _and_ tired of waiting around.” 

Selni noticed that, after only ten minutes of spell casting, his armor was almost entirely whole except for dents that his spell seemed unable to reshape. Otherwise, the scrapes, tears, and chips had filled in and mended. “Have you been complaining like this to them the entire time?”

“I’m not complaining.”

“He has,” Hanthir said, wrapping an arm around their cousin’s higher and significantly broader shoulders, squeezing. “Good to see some things never change, right?”

Selni sighed, already wondering whether she’d bother hanging around her brother and cousin for more than a couple of days.  _At this rate, I’ll need to leave by morning to keep from strangling one of them._ Still, she felt warm inside and relieved to see them, much as she tried to deny it. She gave the cub another rub and scratch before pushing herself from her seat. “Let’s go then.”

Hanthir looked to the blue spell caster. “You okay to keep going, Pehril?”

_Pehril_ , Selni thought, trying to force the name into her memory.  _Pehril. Pehril. Pehril… Well at least someone said his name before I needed to ask for it. That would’ve been awkward. It’s already been over an hour._

Pehril nodded. “Yeah. Thanks.” He shifted his bag around, maybe trying to make it sit more comfortably. “Just glad we’re not heading toward whatever Landelth is sensing.”

Sygren nodded. “That makes three of us.”

Hanthir gave them a disappointed look. “Aww… But that sounded like fun!”

Pehril returned his look with a confused one. “I can’t tell if you’re joking or if you legitimately have some sort of death wish.”

Hanthir cocked his head. “Both?” He nodded. “Both. Both sounds good.” He straightened, patting a resigned Sygren on the back. “We should get going, though. We’re burning daylight.”

Landelth moved ahead. While he kept his eyes on the trail, Selni kept hers trained on the woods, listening for anything out of the ordinary as the cub made quick little steps behind her. Still, every now and then, she stole a look at Landelth and Pehril. She had not yet asked how these two had come into the picture or if they had roped Hanthir and Sygren into this job or if it was the other way around. In fact, it occurred to her that she had not really asked her family anything about what they had been doing since she had last seen them.  _Not the most friendly family reunion,_ she thought, frowning.  _Guess that’s kind of my fault, though. Caught them in the middle of a fight then started arguing with them. But they haven’t really asked about me either._ She paused, and her frown deepened to a scowl.  _Well, except Landelth, but that was mostly to find out about other things he can go kill, probably._


	8. Who all likes fireworks?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The group stops for the night and, while setting up camp, discovers some other oddities of the forest.

The trail meandered a bit, largely following established deer paths, maybe ones blazed by the unicorn hybrid a hundred years ago, or whenever it had decided to settle here. With the alleged presence of a unicorn-like creature, though, Selni could not really say if anything was different here. Even her knack for picking out fey creatures was finding nothing to point toward. For all intents and purposes, this just seemed like a healthy forest with a freak of a bear wandering about. 

When the palest yellow seeped into the sky and the forest’s shadows began to deepen, Landelth led them to a place where the trees grew further apart and the ground was even, with a patch of dirt that could accommodate all of their bedrolls and a fire if they squeezed. While they lay down their burdens and unpacked what they needed, Landelth slipped away with a quiet word and returned ten minutes later with his arms weighed down by dried deadfall. Selni counted them lucky that it had been nearly a week since the last rain.

Glancing to where Sygren was unbuckling his armor, he let his hammer hit the earth with a solid  _whump_ and laid his shield down on his pack. From where she sat, Selni could see the bearded, laughing face painted on the inside of that shield. Though similar to the metal mask atop Sygren’s head, which he likewise removed, the painting was colorful. Where as the metal face seemed almost morbid in its rigidity, the colors and softer, varied lines of the painting lent more life to the face, made it seem welcoming and jolly.

It was also fading and chipped in over a dozen places.

“Hey, Sygren,” Selni called over. “You want me to touch up that painting for you?”

“What, like, right now?”

“Well, no not now. Not like I carry a case of paints with me in the woods. I just meant whenever we stop somewhere and I could grab some. Unless you want something temporary I could make with berries and that sort of thing.”

Sygren gazed down at the shield and a soft, contented smile spread across his bearded face. “Yeah. That’d be great. The paints, I mean. Thanks, cuz.”

“I could make it better if you like, while I’m at it,” she suggested. “I’m better now than I was whenever I painted that for you.” She could not remember how long it had been, but knew that she must have done the decoration at least three years before.

“Nah,” Sygren waved her off, going back to undoing his scale jacket. “Don’t worry about it if you don’t feel like it. I always liked it the way it is.”

Selni nodded and took a moment to enjoy the warm little feeling in her chest that spread a little smile of her own across her lips. Try as she might to deny it, like just about every other artist, praise for her work made her glow. 

“Oh, I can get that,” Pehril said, as Liendel finished assembling the wood and pulled out a tinderbox. “It’ll take just a couple seconds.” Visibly intrigued, Liendel slowly put the dried moss and wood chips he held back into the container and stepped away. Pehril, meanwhile, arranged the sticks and wood into something that might resemble a viable fire if it had already been aflame. Selni was about to point out how he’d never get the thing lit and burning that way, with the wood already so close together and lacking any lighter material for a starter, then remembered how he had lobbed a shimmering, translucent, exploding ball from his hands that had nearly knocked a bear on its side with pure sound. She kept her mouth shut and was glad she did, too, because a moment later Pehril waved his hand, spoke a word that she could not catch, and flicked a coppery spark of light into the wood. The jumble of twigs burst alight from within with a soft  _fwump._ Already Selni could hear the crackle of sap beginning to boil and pop, showing that the fire had taken hold on the thicker wood.

“Wow.” Landelth said, glancing at the tinderbox he still carried in his hand. “That’s… kind of unfair,” he finished with a sheepish chuckle.

Pehril laughed. “Not really. I spent nearly half a year learning the fundamentals before I could even begin to cast that spell. Took another two months of study and practice for me to get it right. Kept making things smell like cinnamon, which was nice, but not really the goal.”

“Huh.” Landelth glanced at the sky. “Well, we’ve got a while before dark and if the fire’s already going, I might as well find more wood.”

As he slipped back into the forest, his swords tapping against his thighs, Hanthir began to strip his armor. Unbuckling the breastplate, he let out a sigh as he lowered it to the grass. “Seriously. I love armor, but taking it off after wearing it all day is the best.”

“I hear ya,” Sygren said, unbuckling his shield and hammer and once more pulling off the heavy scale-clad jacket. Since Selni had no armor of her own to fiddle with, she happened to notice the sliver of creamy white skin poking out from where Sygren’s shirt pulled up as he removed his armor.

“That’s new,” she said as the shirt dropped to conceal the patch again. “When did your skin start going pale?” No one responded as they messed with their equipment. “Sygren.”

He paused. “Wait, you were talking to me?”

“Uh, yeah,” she said, thinking he was playing dumb. “Hanthir’s already white as death. Who else would I be talking to?”

“Hey!” Hanthir said. “That’s unfair! Landelth is way—”

He was cut off when Sygren pulled his shirt up and let out a surprised yell as he exposed his skin. “What the—? What the fuck?!” Sygren scrambled to pull his shirt off, ignoring the laces and nearly ripping it off his head. With the shirt gone, Selni now saw that, branded against his onyx skin, there was not a single swath, but a series of large, milky white and dark  _pink_ circles just below his ribs. All along his left side and on part of his shoulder and arm, though, his black flesh was now crossed with white and rouge zigzags that ran over his body like tattoos before fading into the black around him. Sygren stared down at himself agape. “What the  _fuck?!?_ ” he nearly screamed.

Landelth came sprinting back to camp, one sword drawn. “What’s happen— Whoa!” He stopped short and his eyes went wide along with everyone else’s. “Is that normal?”

Before anyone could answer, there was a loud crack from the fire and a high pitched sizzle. The sizzle turned into a whistle and Sygren’s predicament was overshadowed as the campfire’s orange flames changed to a dancing collage of white, purple, blue and magenta. Green and purple streams of sparks erupted in all directions accompanied by a fanfare of whistles, screeches, and rapid fire cracks that sent the leopard cub bolting away into the undergrowth.

“Put it out!” Hanthir shouted over the din, trying to kick dirt at the flames while dodging sparks. “Put it out already!”

Selni almost had her water skin out of her bag when the chaotic “fire” silence and disappeared with a soft hiss. Pehril had his hand out again and looked like he had just witnessed a murder, his eyes wide and blue cheeks pale.

“Hey, Pehril?” Sygren ventured, patting out a blue spark on his trousers, “I think you miiiight have not quite learned that spell yet.”

Pehril blinked a few more times, staring at the wisps of smoke slipping through the scorched wood. “Uh, no, actually. I can say with almost perfect certainty that I know that spell by heart.”

“Uh, clearly not.”

“No, I know it. I’ve done that a thousand times. I’m not even exaggerating.”

“But I’m guessing it wasn’t supposed to do that,” Landelth prompted.

“Uh, no. No it wasn’t.” They stood silent for a moment, Sygren’s shirt in a heap on the ground and his own condition momentarily forgotten. “I, uh, I don’t think I want to try that again.”

“Yeah, please don’t,” Selni said, looking around and finally spotting the cub pressing itself flat to the ground beneath some ferns on the far side of a solid elm tree.

“Think it was the wood?” Hanthir asked.

Landelth shook his head while Selni said “I’ve been camping out here for days, Hanthir. I think I’d have noticed if the wood was going to explode.” Still keeping an ear to the conversation, she began calming the speckled cat as it shivered in wide-eyed terror and confusion.

“Maybe something here is interfering with my magic,” Pehril offered. “Try lighting it normally.”

“Sure,” Landelth said, shrugging, “but I’m going to use some fresh wood just in case.” It took almost ten minutes for him to organize a tinder pile, build kindling around it, and manage to get a spark to catch. The moment a flame flickered to life, though, it began to sparkle and spit in all colors of the rainbow with a small, high pitched wizzing sound. Landelth cursed, immediately dumping a generous stream of water onto it and then stomping on the remnants for good measure.

“All right,” he said, huffing in frustration. “No fire tonight.”

“Is that going to be a problem?” Hanthir asked. 

“Beats me,” Landelth shrugged. “I sometimes can't get fires burning, but I think that’s just when there’s a summer drought and Sharidin's worried about wildfires. Otherwise I can build a fire no problem. Even if I couldn’t, the animals have always been peaceful enough, so I didn’t need anything to scare them away. Now, though? Well, it’s still late summer, so we won’t freeze, but I wouldn’t place any bets on what the animals will do.” He hesitated. “Or whatever might’ve lately found its way into the forest.”

“You think the noise attracted anything?” Sygren asked while he prodded at the splotches on his body. “Should we find somewhere else?”

“If it did, then whatever is coming this way would already be nearby,” Selni pointed out softly as she managed to get the cub to nuzzle her outstretched hand for reassurance. “If we left, it’d follow us if it wanted to. Also, in case you haven’t noticed, it’s getting dark,” she said, gesturing to the now gloomy trees. “You’re not so good with seeing in the dark like Hanthir and I are.”

“No, but I also don’t like waiting around.” Sygren still did not look up from his mottled skin. “It doesn’t hurt, so that’s something…” he muttered.

“If something’s going to follow us, we’d probably be safer setting up here,” Hanthir asserted. “We’ve clear sight into the woods, a bit of space from the trees where something could hide, and we’d be exposing ourselves to an attack if we moved when you couldn’t see.”

Pehril gave an embarrassed grimace that Selni suspected Sygren would not be able to see in the gathering gloom. “That’s fair. Also, just so you know, I can’t see too well in the dark either.” He turned to Sygren. “Besides, until we know what’s happening to you, we might want to stay put.”

Sygren growled something under his breath. “Well, I’ve been trying to figure out if this is natural or not.”

“Sygren, you have multi-colored stripes and polkadots all over you,” Hanthir said. “What part of that seems ‘natural?’” 

“Hey, you know anyone else who’s more genie than human?” Sygren answered for them before the others could speak. “Yeah, I thought not. Being me is still new territory to all of us, so I’m assuming anything’s possible at this point. Gonna try healing it. See if that helps.” He bent down and lifted his silvery, laughing mask from where he had laid it atop his armor. Staring at it, he took a deep breath then pressed his free hand against the discoloration. For a moment, Selni could see a slight webwork of rippling, faint yellow light wash over his skin before seeming to sink into his body.

“So?” she asked, looking at the multicolored flesh. “When will we know if it worked?”

Sygren frowned. “It should’ve—hic!” He stopped short as he snatched in a quick breath. “Uh, it should’ve—hic!” His body lurched as he made the sound again. “Oh, you’ve—hic!—gotta be fu—hic!” He paused for a few seconds as another spurt of hiccups escaped. “ _Really?!_ ” he nearly shouted, looking up at the sky. “Is this a—hic!— joke?!”

Hanthir stepped forward, hand outstretched. “Here. Let me see if I can do something.” Selni thought that Sygren was trying to resist, but another burst of hiccups incapacitated him to the point that he had to sit down and could only feebly swat at Hanthir’s arm. Before Selni could say anything, her brother put his hand against Sygren’s obsidian skin and a pulse of soft grey light, nearly indistinguishable in the dusk, flickered across his flank. In the light’s wake, though, the colored splotches and patterns deepened, becoming more vibrant while the pale parts turned to ivory. “Oh,” Hanthir said. “Okay, that didn’t work.”

Sygren tried to curse, was interrupted by another hiccup, and simply shoved Hanthir away. “Maybe we shouldn’t try any magical healing for a while,” Selni said, annoyed that something so obvious had not occurred to her brother. “You know, in case we end up killing our cousin or something.”

“Okay, yeah,” Hanthir said, withdrawing from Sygren’s glare and trying not to laugh as his cousin jiggled with hiccups. “I just thought my healing might be different since it’s not like his magic.”

“Wait, so you can heal too?” Landelth asked. Selni glanced his way and saw that the third half-elf was surprised, but more concerned with Sygren’s condition. “How is it different? It still looked like magic.”

“It’s from a different source,” Hanthir explained. “It’s something I picked up in the army. I’m not very good at it, though, and can’t do it often.”

“Well, that makes the two of us,” Landelth said, frowning. “But I’ve been injured in these woods before. Had a bad fall once and used the one healing spell I know just to get back on my feet and it worked far better than it probably should have. Tried it again on a wounded hunting dog and again with a traveller; same thing.” His expression straddled the line between contemplative and alarmed while he moved to inspect Sygren. “Don’t worry,” he said as Sygren shied back. “I’m not going to hit you with another spell. Just going to take a look the old fashioned way.”

“I’ll take a look too,” Selni said, getting up. “Two heads are better than one, right?”

“Unless it’s my head,” Hanthir said. “You know, because it’d make everyone stupider?”

“Yeah, no one is going to deny that,” Selni said, crouching beside Landelth as his gloved fingers explored a stretch of magenta flesh.

“Does this hurt?” Landelth asked. “Is it tender or anything?”

“No,” Sygren managed between hiccups.

After a few moments, Landelth shook his head. “The discoloration doesn’t extend all over his body and I don’t see anything in his mouth, but it’s pretty dark.” He looked to Selni. “Any ideas?”

She frowned. “Hey, Sygren, isn’t that the side that the bear hit?”

Sygren frowned. “Hic!— Yeah.” His expression changed as the connection sank in. “Oh—hic!— shit.”

“So the magic worked, but it also did this…” Selni sighed and stood up. “He’s not in pain or anything, so I don’t think there’s much we can do about it. Are there any healers in Fandír?”

“Yeah, a few good ones. But I don’t know if it’d be a good idea to move him until we know how this is going to affect him.”

“And he can’t see in the dark,” Hanthir added. Landelth turned to him, frowning. “Selni already said it. Yeah, his parents are elves, but he’s never been able to see in the dark or anything and sleeps like most other people do. He’d be stumbling around the forest until dawn, even if we led the way.” 

“But getting out of the forest might fix things if that’s what’s causing this,” Selni pointed out. 

“Yeah, but that won't matter if we get attacked while moving or he just trips and snaps his neck.” Hanthir looked to Sygren. “Sygren, you feeling sick or anything? Anything actually feel wrong?”

“I’m sick—hic!—of you worrying about—hic!—me.” He took a moment to get the next few hiccups out. “I’m okay tho—hic!—though.”

“Well, let’s try to get rid of those hiccups at least.” Landelth handed him one of the water skins. “Hold your breath for as long as you can while drinking. That usually fixes it for me.” Sygren nodded, took as deep of a breath as he could before the next hiccup, and started chugging, squeezing the water into his mouth. 

“When you finish that, Sygren, you tell us what you want to do,” Selni said. “Guess this really depends on how you’re feeling and what risks you want to take.” 

About a minute later, Sygren finally yanked the water from his mouth, gasping for air. “Let’s just stay here,” he managed after a moment. “Took way too long to get this far and I don’t feel too—hic!” He turned his head again to the heavens. “Still?!”

“Well, if we’re staying, we should set watches,” Hanthir suggested. 

Landelth nodded. “I can take the first one. Not too tired.”

“Sygren should probably sleep the entire night, though,” Selni said. “See if that helps him recover.” 

“Makes sense.” Landelth turned to the large man who was doing his best to stifle further hiccups while putting his shirt back on. “We’ll wake you up between shifts, just to see how you’re doing, okay? If there’s a problem, tell whoever’s awake. Sound good?” Sygren, tight lipped and holding his breath again, just nodded. “Okay then.”

“Maybe we should stay up in pairs, though,” Selni added. “It’ll be safer to watch both sides of the camp at once and one of us can always keep an eye on Sygren.” After a few minutes, they agreed on staggered, rotating shifts so that at least one sentry was awake and alert while the next blinked away the bleariness of sleep. It meant feeling a little groggy the next day, but considering Landelth’s insecurity in his own forest, none of them complained. Even Sygren kept his mouth shut about it, though Selni suspected that was because he would get to sleep through most of the night, unlike the others.

She cleared away a few stray stones and twigs before laying out her bedroll. Then, after making sure that her brother and Landelth were ready for their watch, curled up around the leopard cub, which nestled into the crook between her knees and stomach with a contented burble. She closed her eyes and let her mind and muscles relax, feeling the cub’s short, prickly fur under her fingers rise and sink with its breath. Just before the trancelike meditation could begin, though, she heard one of the boys on guard snicker and do a terrible job of stifling their laughter. She popped her head up to see them still facing opposite directions and out of the fire light so that their night vision was not hampered. Even from there, though, she could see that her brother’s face was scrunched up in suppressed glee as his shoulders shook with giggles. Normally, she might have told him to pipe down, but she was already halfway asleep and just let her head plop back to the backpack she was using as a pillow. Besides, Sygren spoke up a moment later, urging them to not talk for at least five minutes if they were physically capable of that.


	9. A Brother-Sister Heart To Heart

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> While sharing a watch with her brother, Selni takes the time to catch up with him after being apart for the last few years.

When Landelth gently spoke to wake her, she opened her eyes to a world of greys, with the muted colors only growing vibrant in the firelight. She squeezed her eyes shut and open again to rouse herself as Landelth apologized, averted his gaze, and moved over to Sygren. Giving the larger man a small shake on the shoulder caused Sygren to growl like big dog. “Gods above, I’m fine,” he grumbled. “Just let me sleep.”

“I should really check your side first,” Landelth said apologetically.

“You should really just let me sleep already.” Sygren rolled to face away. 

Selni watched Landelth grimace. “Sorry. But I’m checking anyway.”

Sygren groaned. “For the love of— You can’t even see colors at night, right? My cousins can’t.”

“No, but there’s enough firelight and I can see if the discoloration has spread or diminished.” 

“Oh for fff…” Sygren threw off his cover with a grunt. “Fine.” Landelth pulled up Sygren’s shirt and, though Selni could not see anything from where she was pulling herself together, he did not seem alarmed. A moment later, Landelth withdrew to his own bedroll to lie down and Sygren burrowed into his bed, grumbling as he fell back asleep. 

Shivering with the slight chill that had set in, Selni slipped out of her covers, prompting the cub to languidly crack open its eyes before shifting on its side and closing them again. Selni bundled herself up in her cloak, mostly just to stay cozy as she acclimated to the air, and restrung her bow before setting down behind her brother.

“I thought your friend was going to take the first part of my watch with me,” Selni said through a yawn.

“Yeah, but he’s tired,” Hanthir explained, “even if he won’t admit it. Besides, it’s been a while since we’ve seen each other. Thought it’d be a good time to talk to you.”

Selni nodded. She would have smiled at that normally, but she was too groggy and instead just made a soft “Um-hmph.” 

“So how’ve you been? Don’t know what you’ve been doing.”

Selni pulled in a deep breath, trying to wake up enough to answer. “Give me a minute.” After spending a couple of minutes doing other small things to clear her head, she finally answered “I was just kind of wandering around. Went where I could find work with animals, hunted game for money when I couldn’t… Honestly, not that much happened. Dad apparently sent a bunch of letters to one place I stayed, but I didn’t read them until I happened to pass back through a few months later.”

She could not see Hanthir’s expression, but might as well have heard his grimace. “He must be worried about you.”

“He’s always worried, but he doesn’t have to be annoying about it.”

“Did you at least reply to him?”

“Yeah.”

“Well,” he prompted when she failed to elaborate, “what’d you say?”

“That I wasn’t staying in that town anymore, that I was fine, and that I wasn’t coming back home any time soon.”

“That’s it?”

“Yeah, pretty much.”

He sighed. “Geez. Selni, you could’ve at least sent him a proper letter. Told him how you were doing or something.”

“It didn’t really matter and I didn’t feel like it.”

“Well, it probably mattered to him. I mean, he sent all those letters and you pretty much just said ‘Don’t bother me, bye.’”

“It’s really not that big of a deal, Hanthir.”

“I bet it was to him.”

She rolled her eyes.  _ Not even ten minutes alone and he’s doing this again.  _ She turned halfway around. “Could you drop it already? You always take his side.”

“No I don’t.”

“Yes. You do, Hanthir. I don’t even know why. He didn’t exactly do the best job raising Tethea, Lykie, or us.”

“Yeah, but he tried. Didn’t really have the best model to work from. And he’s still our dad.”

_ Which is why I even bothered to write him a letter in the first place. _ “So what about you?” she asked, trying to change the subject. “Why’d you leave Orva? I thought joining the republic’s army had been your dream. Didn’t even know you’d left until I went back to a town I used to live in and got some letters that had been waiting for me.”

“I left the army more than half a year ago.”

“So why didn’t you tell me? That’s kind of a big deal.”

“Yeah, well, funny how hard it is to keep in touch with you when no one knows where you are.” Selni grimaced, but let the jibe pass without response. She had deserved that. “I got tired of it. Four years and I was only promoted once. Never left that town, never got to fight on the border… I was just sitting around doing nothing except train sometimes and pick drunk dumbasses off the street.” She saw him shrugging out of the corner of her eye. “So when it came time to renew my commission, I just… didn’t. Figured I could do better somewhere else.”

“What do you mean by ‘better?’ Get a better position?”

“That or just do something more to help people.” He paused. “Also, the army was doing some really stupid things that pissed me off.”

“Like what?”

He gave a short, half laugh. “Oh, don’t get me started.”

“No, really. What happened?”

“Okay, I’ll give you one example. Any more, and I’ll be ranting at you all night. You remember how I’m supposed to have paid leave days to visit home every once in a while?” Selni vaguely remembered something about that, but had only once been home at the same time as her brother since they had gone their own ways. “Well, they just ‘forgot’ to give me it once. It was on the schedule, I had confirmed my intention to leave, and my commander knew about it. Two days before I’m supposed to go, though, we get a missive from command saying that some of us had to march to a nearby fort for additional training. Guess who was on the list? Oh, and I had already made arrangements to travel with a merchant who was heading east.  _ And _ I had already done that same training five months before.”

“Ouch. Why didn’t you just leave?”

“Because it would have been considered dereliction of duty and, depending on how much of a jackass the person giving orders was, I could have even been tried as a deserter.”

_ Which means hanging. _ “Wow. That… that’s kind of harsh.”

“Yeah, especially since I could’ve just gone to training with one of the next groups a couple weeks later. Oh, and to make it even better? On paper, they still considered me as having taken my leave, so I didn’t get my leave at all that year. My commander let me off duty for a week without anyone officially knowing to try to make up for it, but he couldn’t let me leave the city.”

“Wow. I told you the army wasn’t a good pick.”

“Don’t get me wrong. I don’t regret joining the army. The decision was a good one, if you ask me. It’s just that the army couldn’t keep its shit together and I felt useless because of it. If they’d done a better job and made me useful, I would’ve stayed.”

“But why go south? Why come here? Could’ve just transferred or joined some other province, right?”

Hanthir groaned. “Not really. If you join one place, you’re expected to stay there. Unless there’s an official transfer, you have to start from the bottom again when you join a different province’s forces. You have to make it there on your own and leave behind your rank.”

“That’s dumb.”

“Yeah. No kidding.”

“So… you thought the empire’s armies might be better run? Would they even take a foreigner?”

“They’ll take anyone, yeah. But I wasn’t sure I wanted to join the army again. I was considering it, but thought I might just join the city guard somewhere. I’ve been considering Fandír for a while. It’s a nice place.”

“Okay, but why get sent out here with your friends if you haven’t joined yet?”

“Kind of a loyalty test. And to see if I’m any good. Landelth has worked with them for a couple years on a contract basis.”

“Speaking of which, how long have you been friends with those two guys?” she asked, gesturing to the sleeping half-elf and vedalkin. “How’d you become friends?”

He chuckled. “Uh, Selni? I’ve only known them for a couple of days.” 

“What? But you seem to get along with them really well.”

“They’re nice guys. Easy to get along with. But, no, I haven’t known them for long. The city constable offered Sygren and me this job, except we’re more like assistants and bodyguards for Landelth. He’s the one who knows what’s going on, or has the best idea, and the constable seems to trust him.”

“But, he just seems so… I don’t know. Formal? Stiff? He at least laughs with you.”

“Hells if I know. He was like that when we met him yesterday. Maybe he just needs to get used to you and I think he’s still getting used to Sygren.”

“That’s fair,” she laughed softly. “He takes some getting used to.” She glanced at her black sheep of a cousin then rolled her eyes.  _ He’s bossy, but he’s a good guy. _ She was honestly glad that Hanthir had decided to travel with him rather than on his own. Sygren had more sense than her brother seemed to and probably had kept him from getting in trouble.  _ Or at least from getting scammed _ . “Well, maybe he’ll loosen up. The blue guy, too. He’s pretty nervous. I mean, I can  _ see _ him tensing up. Kinda like a scared cat.”

“Well, he’s never actually been in the field before. He’s a student—Scholar? Student? Haven’t really figured that part out yet—and he was kind of forced to come along. Never been in a fight before today and now he’s been in two, both of which could have killed him. Can’t blame him for being jumpy, especially since we don’t know what’s happening around here.”

“Not sure how I feel about someone so inexperienced with us,” Selni mused. “Everyone’s gotta start somewhere, but are we going to have to pull him out of the fire or babysit him?”

“Don’t think so. Held his own well enough when we fought an ogre earlier.”

“You guys fought an ogre?!?” she asked, horrified. “That’s way too dangerous! What in all the hells, Hanthir?!” He cackled with glee and began recounting the fight with probably a healthy dose of embellishment, if Selni knew her brother.

They continued talking like this for the next hour or so until Hanthir got up to pull Pehril awake. After he did, he checked on Sygren again, though Selni guessed from the vehement groaning that her cousin was just fine. Pehril did not strike Selni as the talkative type, though she made a bit of an effort to chat once he was a little more awake and lucid. The conversation stuttered and would pick up and drop at random points, though, so she contented herself with silence for most of her watch. Considering how much time she was spending alone nowadays, it did little to perturb her, even if she could feel Pehril as a small knot of anxious energy at her back. By the time she finally rose to check on her cousin and go to sleep, it was requiring a nearly physical effort to keep her eyes from drooping. She was soon satisfied via Sygren’s complaints that he felt well and also noticed that the bizarre coloration had, much to her relief, begun to recede.

Unfortunately, due to her interrupted sleep, when she finally woke to Sygren shaking her awake in shadow-dappled sunlight, she could tell that she was going to be a bitch until at least midmorning and the guilt and knowledge made her even more irritable. 


	10. End of the Trail

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Selni and Hanthir get into a sibling spat and Landelth tells the group that their hunt for Sharidin has gotten more complicated.

Hanthir took one look at his sister, heard her say one sentence, and knew that she was going to be a bitch for at least the next few hours. _Seriously,_ he thought. _You’d think she’d have grown out of that after a while._ She had never been much of a morning person, but then again neither of them had. _Still, at least when someone wakes me up early, I’m just quiet and stupid for a while. I don’t go biting people’s heads off._ As he thought this, though, he realized that he was being a bit unfair. He had to admit that, even though he was nicer to wake up, Selni had also inherited a lot of other more agreeable traits than he had. Intelligence, grace, and a stunning smile, for example, came to mind.

Trying not to dwell on that too much, he cautiously made the rounds to Landelth and then Pehril while they got ready to leave, whispering that they should give Selni some space for a while.

“Yeah,” Pehril whispered back. “I noticed.” He nodded to Sygren, who stood confused and increasingly irritated as Selni lambasted him.

“…and you got to sleep for the entire night,” she snapped. “So, no, you don’t get to tell me to hurry up.”

Hanthir turned and grimaced so that only Pehril would see. “Yeah… Still, don’t think she’d do that to you or Landelth. She can just can get away with Sygren and me ‘cause we’re family, but no reason to push your luck.”

Pehril grimaced in turn. “Yeah, I can understand that. It’s kind of the same with my own siblings.”

Hanthir blinked. “Wait, you didn’t mention you had siblings!”

“Yup. Two brothers and a sister.”

“HA!” Hanthir burst into a short laugh. “Hey, Selni! Listen! Pehril here’s the exact opposite of us! Three boys and one girl in the family!”

“Wow, Hanthir,” she said, her tone acerbic. “It’s almost as though that sort of thing can happen to families other than ours.”

“Yeah, but that’s still funny, right?” he asked, ignoring her sarcasm.

Selni gave a tight lipped smile framed by still bleary eyes. “Yeah. Sure.”

“Hey, Landelth?” Hanthir asked as the other half-elf shifted his shoulders to settle his pack, looking only a little more alert than Selni and Sygren. “How many brothers and sisters do you have?”

“None. Never had any.”

“Wow. Seriously?”

“Yup. Told Pehril the same thing yesterday. Didn’t have many kids my age around me while growing up either.”

“Well, that much I can understand,” Sygren said, stepping up beside them. “Might as well have been living alone in the mountains where we were.”

Hanthir faked an astonished expression. “Is that why you’re such an ass?” Sygren swiped at his head and Hanthir stood and took it, cackling like an imp as the slap mussed his hair, requiring that he retie it. 

While Sygren finished putting on his armor and Selni was being, well, Selni, Landelth did a quick search of the surrounding area. The others finished preparing and now had to wait for him to return. In the meanwhile, Sygren decided to cast a quick spell. Even though his skin had returned more or less to normal, he thought it would be a good idea to check each of them and their supplies for any poisons or infections. Aside from the leopard cub having a few parasites on them, which Selni quickly removed, and Pehril fighting off a slight cold that he had previously been unaware of, though, everything was clean. Upon Sygren’s report, Hanthir noticed that Selni relaxed a bit. Chances are, the others hadn’t even noticed the minute change, but, well, he was her twin. He was used to noticing that kind of thing in her and he expected that her mood would be at least slightly improved.

When Landelth returned, he noticed them loitering around and grimaced. “Sorry. Didn’t mean to keep you waiting.”

Pehril managed to speak up before Hanthir could make a bad joke or Selni or Sygren could say something biting. “It’s all right! Did you find anything?”

“Just more of the usual. Doesn’t look like anything came too close to our camp last night and Sharidin’s hoof prints are still visible from where we broke off the trail.”

“Yeah, about that,” Hanthir interrupted, “how do you know they’re Sharimawhosit’s and not from some other horse?”

“I don’t, but the horse’s prints aren’t deep enough to make me think it had a rider and I’ve never seen any wild horses anywhere near here. Could be a runaway or something else like that, but I don’t really think a horse would want to live in this forest. They’d be happier in the hills south of here where they could run without dodging around trees.”

“But animals and a bunch of other things are acting weird around here now,” Sygren said. “You said yourself it kind of seems like anything could happen at this point.”

“But it’s also our only lead,” Pehril pointed out. “Unless you’ve come up with a better idea, we should probably at least see where this takes us.”

Sygren shrugged. “That’s fair.”

“We should get moving then,” Landelth said, starting to walk. “The trail’s only a couple of days old, but I don’t want to risk something happening to him or getting caught in the rain before we can catch up.” He glanced at the spotless sky through the trees as he moved. “Unless we’re gtting another drought, that is.”

Hanthir started after and remembered something. “Hey, Landelth, what happened to the thing you said you sensed yesterday.”

Landelth frowned. “What thing?”

“You know. The thing you said didn’t belong? Said it felt like the bear had.”

“Oh, right.” Landelth looked a little sheepish at not understanding immediately. “That. Sorry. I don’t think it’s moved. If the trail keeps going the way it has, we should pass well clear of it. Sharidin should be able to tell us more about it when we find him.”

“ _ If _ we find him,” Selni interjected. “You told these guys that unicorns are pretty much impossible to find in their own forests if they don’t want to be found, right? Actually, before you answer that, have you even mentioned the huge influence that unicorns have on their territory?”

“Um, yeah I told them about that first one,” Landelth said, taken aback, “but I didn’t mention the other one. That’s pretty common knowledge, though.”

Hanthir blinked, for once not feigning ignorance. “Is it?”

Landelth looked around at them. “Isn’t it? I knew that even before I first came to Fandír.”

“I’d heard rumors about that,” Pehril said, “though I’ve never really made a study of such creatures.”

“Then have any of you,” Selni resumed, turning on the others, “bothered to ask how things got so out of control around here in the first place even though there’s a freakin’  _ unicorn _ living in this forest who should be able to keep things safe?”

“Well, that’s what we’re going to go ask it,” Hanthir said, letting some of his exasperation show. “We kind of already maybe might have considered this.”

“Hanthir, you don’t have to get angry,” Selni said with clipped words. “I’m just trying to figure out what’s going on.”

Hanthir threw up his hands, making a point of showing his bafflement on his face. “We told you what’s going on! Is it that hard to believe that we haven’t already gone over this a few times? You think we’re that dumb?”

“I’m just trying to make sense of everything!” Selni snapped, her hair flying loose of its ponytail. 

“We’re trying to find a unicorn-pegasus hybrid in a forest where magic turns you purple and fire explodes into more colors and noises than a peacock in mating season!” Hanthir nearly shouted. He knew that his temper was exacerbating the issue, prompting his sister to argue even harder, but sometimes he got tired of her just walking all over him. Yeah, he pretended to be an idiot sometimes, and he knew that he definitely wasn’t the smartest person around, but did she have to treat him like a simpleton all the time? “What part of that doesn’t make sense?!”

“Uh, guys?” Landelth probed. Hanthir and Selni ignored him.

“Oh, I don’t know,” Selni continued, “maybe all of it?”

“Well, then you could have just asked normally instead of treating us like morons.”

“I’m not treating you like morons!”

“Seriously, guys?” Landelth tried again, a little louder. Hanthir briefly registered that they had stopped moving as Selni caught up to him and they glared face to face. He also briefly noticed Sygren trying to pull Landelth back, saying the issue wasn’t worth getting caught up in.

“I don’t know, Selni. It  _ reeeeeeally _ feels like that’s what you’re doing.”

“BOTH OF YOU!” Landelth boomed. His voice wasn’t particularly deep, but he apparently knew how to use it and the projection overpowered them and made both turn, shocked. Hanthir saw something like that sternness he had first witnessed in the half-elf when they had met at the inn and Hanthir had the impression that there was an element of barely suppressed anger tied up behind that tightened brow. However, once everyone’s attention was on him, Landelth wilted and seemed almost apologetic. “I don’t mean to get involved in this, but, seriously? We are  _ hunting _ a wild animal in a forest that may be  _ filled _ with angry, bloodthirsty monsters. We might not have seen much worse than a colorful bear so far, but I’d really not like to take any chances and, more than that, I don’t want to scare Sharidin away. So could you  _ please _ cut it out or at least be a little more quiet?”

Hanthir felt that shrinking sensation in his gut as embarrassment set in. He didn’t lose sight of the important things so easily most of the time. It was easy to blame Selni for the outburst; for his lack of control. Still, even if she always could manage to get him frustrated, that was no excuse for losing focus in the middle of enemy territory. Worse than that, Landelth was right. Making that much noise? They might have attracted something that Hanthir didn’t even want to pretend was cute and cuddly.

Selni pressed her lips into a thin, bloodless line. “Right. Sorry. Did you have to yell, though?” she asked without any sarcasm. 

_ Or, well, without THAT much. _

Landelth grimaced again, his expression somewhere between apologetic and annoyed. “Kinda, yeah. Sorry.”

Sygren, for once, did not start complaining or reprimanding them. “Come on. We need to get moving. We’ve lost time and Landelth’s right. We might’ve just told something nasty that we’re here.”

“Okay, then can we do that?” Pehril asked, the urgency in his voice accented by how he was already turned toward the trail and looked ready to sprint. “I  _ really _ don’t want to be here if something comes to investigate.”

They followed Landelth at a quick jog, Sygren’s armor rattling softly with each step. Luckily, the hoof prints followed a fairly clear path, so they were able to keep the pace for a few minutes, although Sygren and Pehril were panting by the time Landelth turned them onto rougher terrain and they were forced to slow as he tracked. Fortunately, it seemed that the exercise had helped to wake Selni and from her face Hanthir could tell that she wasn’t going to be such a pain in the ass anymore.

He kept one ear cocked as they went, listening for anything that might be following them. Nothing presented itself, but he was so focused on the task that Hanthir nearly ran into Landelth when he stopped.

Before Hanthir could ask what was wrong, Landelth spoke. “Sharidin might be in trouble,” he said, staring into the forest to their right.

“We already knew that,” Pehril pointed out. “Has there been some new development?”

Landelth nodded. “The presence I felt before is coming from that way,” he gestured toward where he gazed. “And it’s close. The tracks go that way too, though. They’re not that old, either. Maybe a day. He stopped for a while to graze and sleep about half a mile back. Didn’t find any blood and the tracks were even, so he wasn’t injured or running. I don’t think whatever’s out there had found him yet. Could’ve changed by now.”

“Then why are we standing here?” Pehril asked. “Shouldn’t we be worried or at least hurry?”

“Straight into another massive purple bear?” Sygren asked. “That doesn’t seem like an especially smart idea.”

“We don’t really have any better options, though,” Selni noted, looking at Landelth. “Do we?”

“We could try circling around, but we’d risk losing the trail and only have whatever that monster is as a point of reference. If it’s not going after Sharidin, then we get set back and end up dangerously close to something we don’t know anything about and is probably hungry or just plain vicious.” He unslung and began stringing his bow, straining his back and shoulder muscles to bend the stave. Selni took his cue and did likewise with her lighter hunting bow. “Or we follow the trail, which is the fastest way to Sharidin, and probably end up facing the monster anyhow.” He drew the string back, testing it, and nocked an arrow. “Anyone have better ideas? Because I’d really like a better idea.”

“Don’t try to pet it this time?” Sygren offered, drawing his war hammer and pulling the shield off his back. “Or whatever it was you tried with the bear.”

Landelth winced. “That was a spell. Lets me talk with animals, but it only works on, well, animals. My teacher said never to try it on hybrids like werewolves or hippogriffs. Never made an animal actually attack me before, though, even when the spell failed.”

“Maybe it’s backfiring like Sygren’s magic is,” Hanthir suggested.

“Or that wasn’t a ‘bear,’ in the strictest sense of the word,” Pehril offered. “If it was a shape changer or maybe if a spirit or something like that had possessed the bear, then that would negate any spell that works specifically on animals.”

"Point taken," Landelth nodded. “Either way, I’d be really cautious with magic until we get out of here."

Hanthir frowned. "My magic worked just fine, though. Tore into the bear the way it should have."

"And the only magic of mine that behaved differently was when I tried to start a campfire," Pehril pointed out. "Still, until we have a better idea of what's changed or what is affecting which spells, we might be better off only using what we already know works."

"Well, if one of you loses an arm or something, I'm still going to try to heal you," Sygren said. "Good luck stopping that. Might turn you yellow like a daffodil, but at least you won't bleed to death."

"That's... appreciated?" Selni finished. "Hopefully we won't need that though. Besides, we still don't know if your 'healing' has left any permanent damage or changes."

"And we won't until we get out of this forest, which we can't do before finding a gods damned unicorn thing," Sygren said, exasperated, "so can we please just get going already?"

"That's fair," Pehril agreed. "Everyone have what they need in case something attacks us again?" He pulled a small crystal from the pouch he kept at his hip as if to demonstrate. "Getting used to fighting already?” Hanthir asked, eyebrows raised.

"No, and I still really don't want to if we can at all help it in any way shape or form because that experience has been somewhere between bad and awful both times," he grimaced as he paused for a breath. "But I also don't want to get caught by surprise or defenseless. That would be considerably worse."

"Can't argue with that," Sygren agreed.

They took a minute to check their equipment, loosen their weapons in their sheaths, and readjust their bags so that they could drop the packs at a moment's notice. As they resumed the path, Selni quickened her stride to walk beside Landelth who had nearly doubled his own pace. "Do you actually have an idea about how we're going to find this thing?" she asked. “Sharidin, I mean.” Hanthir was close enough and the woods quiet that he could pick up her hushed words.

"Not really," he admitted. "It's partly luck, but he should know that we're here to help. If he's in trouble, he'll make it so that we can find him. If he doesn't want us to help, though, well, we can do something to draw him out or maybe flush him into the open. Just don't want to do that since that'd probably involve hurting the forest or threatening it. I like this place, so I'd really rather not."

"And we'd also have an angry unicorn-thing probably trying to kill us while we were in its home where it has more power," Selni pointed out. "Not a big deal though." Landelth chuckled, though Hanthir could see he was worried. "If we don't find him by the end of the day, we'll try something else. Unless he started running, we should be on him soon."

Selni nodded and let Landelth move ahead again, falling into step with her brother just behind. "Remind me when we get out of here to ask where you picked up the hard-ass," she murmured to him. "This guy really needs to loosen up."

"He can actually be pretty funny,” Hanthir said, a little surprised that he was defending a near stranger. "I think he's just tense from being here. Hasn't exactly been a friendly stroll. He's worried."

Selni shrugged in assent as the group fell silent once again.

Ten minutes later, Landelth passed word that he could feel the other entity close by. "It's still in the same direction as the tracks," he whispered when they pulled up in a group. "We're going to run across it either way."

"Might be for the best," Selni noted. "We could get an idea of what it is or what it wants. Maybe it's not dangerous."

"But if it is, we'll want to get rid of it somehow," Sygren pointed out. "If we can." "Figure out what it is first, try to pet it, and if we can’t, kill it," Hanthir whispered back. "Sounds like a good plan."

"Sooner rather than later," Landelth said, either not noticing or doing a great job of ignoring the joke. He turned and slipped through the trees, somehow managing to stay nearly silent even as he jogged ahead. Sygren and Hanthir, not wanting to make too much of a racket, kept back and let the others run ahead. Even Pehril went with them, though Hanthir guessed that his curiosity was getting the better of his fear finally.

_ Especially after that thing with the bear, I can't blame him, _ he mused.  _ This has gotta be some sort of magical researcher's wet dream, right? _ He frowned.  _ Okay, maybe not. He doesn't study animals, he said. But still,… _

He was running loops in his brain when Landelth stopped dead in his tracks and nearly dropped his bow. Soon after, Selni and Pehril likewise stood transfixed. When Hanthir caught up, he saw that their expressions ranged from confusion to bemusement to horror.

"What...?" Before he could finish the question, Selni pointed ahead into the woods. Squinting and trying to follow her finger, it somehow took him nearly a minute to notice the patch of bright blue moving in the trees. When it stepped into view, Hanthir felt his own face twist, stupefied as he watched what must have been Sharidin prance through the forest.


	11. Everything About This Seems Wrong

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Now that they have finally found Sharidin, the group is baffled and alarmed by the bizarre state he is in.

_Prance._

That was the best word he could think of to describe it. The unicorn-pegasus had it's huge, feathery wings tucked in at its side as it nearly skipped like a show horse on parade through the undergrowth. He had expected the creature to be white like in the stories, but instead its coat was the color of a clear summer sky and nearly glowed with its own light while the mane and feathers were streaked with bright purples, pinks, and reds. Furthermore, Sharidin's eyes were huge, even for a horse, and even from nearly a hundred feet away, Hanthir could see something literally sparkling in them like gems in a pool of black water. The only part of the creature that wasn’t shining or sparkling was its needle-tipped horn, which was a dull brownish red. He could even swear that he heard the thing humming and singing something like a nursery rhyme to itself.

 _Yeah,_ he thought. _This is weird._ "Uh, do all unicorns look like that?" he finally asked no one in particular.

"Unicorns do _not_ look like that," Pehril denied, shaking his head.

" _Sharidin_ doesn't look like that," Landelth affirmed, jolting himself from inaction. Without waiting to see what the others would do, the city’s ranger stepped toward the hybrid, nocked bow in one hand and the other raised and open, placating. "Sharidin?" he softly called.

The... whatever it was jumped into the air, spinning to face the group, oversized eyes wide. "Ohhhhhh my!" he nickered in a high pitched, overly enunciated voice. "You startled me! That wasn't nice. I could have exploded!"

"Ex... exploded?" Landelth’s back was to them, but judging by his tone, Hanthir guessed that his expression had reverted to bewilderment.

"Or sneezed. Or impaled you. Or tripped," the iridescent creature listed, bobbing his head side to side with each possible disaster. "Or found a friendly gnome to eat."

"I don't know anything about unicorns," Hanthir whispered to the others, "but there seems to be a lot wrong with that list." The others nodded and Hanthir found himself gripping the hilt of his gladius and reaching for his power, keeping it ready at his fingertips. Even without manifesting it, he could feel the chill of the Shadowfell prick his fingertips and dance across his palm.

"What happened to you?" Landelth asked, changing the subject.

“Well, that's rude.”

Hanthir could have sworn he saw the equine mouth pull into a pouting frown. _Can horses do that?_ Granted, horses also could not speak, that he was aware of, so he was willing to make allowances.

Sharidin sniffed. Not snorted, sniffed. “You haven't even invited me to tea."

“We— we don't have–” Landelth stammered. “You don't drink even tea, do you?”

“Well,” Sharidin huffed,” I _might._ ” Hanthir was almost certain this time that he could see the animal pouting.

_Pouting! How does a fucking horse even pout?!_

"And this is _my_ forest after all. _You_ should be bringing _me_ gifts." This time the unicorn-pegasus's eyebrows drew together in a knot, which, once again, he did not think horses could do.

 _I don’t think they even have eyebrows, normally… Do they?_ He had never exactly made a point of checking before.

"How has everyone been forgetting to bring me gifts? Or to pay for staying here? Or for breathing on odd numbered beats? You don't breathe when you should be humming or whistling or singing at the right tempo."

Landelth shook his head. “I— I'm sorry, but I don't understand what you're saying. We didn't know to bring gifts. No one ever talked about bringing you anything."

"And they have been very rude and negligent in doing so."

"Um, I'm sorry? We came because we were worried about you, with all of the monsters and the way they've been acting... Are you hurt? Have you been attacked?"

"My _sensibilities_ have been attacked!" Sharidin cried. "And affronted! Since when does my sovereignty over the forest and every living thing on this side of the stars mean so little? Respect is never out of fashion."

"Uh..." Landelth trailed off and looked back at the group, blatantly confused and silently pleading for some help.

"So do you need a hand with anything?” Sygren asked, stepping forward. Or protection? Or maybe someone to kick out the monsters for you?"

When he approached, Sharidin's head snapped toward him. The creature danced a little on its legs before skipping forward, propelled by a beat of its hefty wings, which Hanthir was pretty sure sprinkled rainbow-colored powder in the process. Pulling up in front of Sygren’s bulky, black figure, Sharidin leaned in as if to smell Hanthir's cousin, who leaned back a bit to avoid getting his face gouged by the horn.

Sharidin stared for a few moments, as if scrutinizing the pores in Sygren skin. When next he spoke, his voice was an octave lower and almost resonant, as if the sound were vibrating in Sharidin’s barrel chest. “You are connected.” Hanthir blinked and peered closer. Sharidin’s eyes lost some of their unnatural sparkle, even seeming to shrink to normalcy as they focused on Sygren. "You have a channel to the divine."

“He really doesn't seem that 'divine' to me most of the time,” Sygren replied, watching the horn, “but yeah. Sure."

Sharidin only then seemed to notice the others standing further away and stared at Hanthir. His eyes widened again and the inner light returned as he nearly shouted in his earlier, excited, high pitched voice "And we have an angel baby!” he cheered, giggling. “How disgusting!" Giddy and grinning as much as a horse could, he trotted in a quick circle, tossing his head before dropping to roll on the ground like a dog. "You two should know to bow to your betters and offer your firstborn children upon meeting the divine," he said from the ground, looking at them upside down from on his back.

“My—" Hanthir stuttered and started forward with Selni and Pehril in tow. "Excuse me?"

"Or your reproductive organs. Those ought to make for nice decorations. I need new ones after all." Sharidin righted himself and sprang back upright with a snap of his wings to assist. "The others I have gathered are already rotting. The smell is nice, but the colors are all wrong." "I can't tell," Hanthir began as he turned to the others, frustrated, "is he threatening us? It kind of sounds like he's threatening us."

“I am not threatening you!" Sharidin's expression fell, his voice fading to a petulant whimper. “I'm just selecting which parts of you I want."

"Uh, you don't get to keep any parts of us.” Sygren raised his hammer slightly, glowering. Selni smacked him on the shoulder, hissing "You're making it worse."

"You're wrong and she's going to be a miller," Sharidin said, nodding sagely to Sygren then Selni. Hanthir watched the muscles in Landelth’s jaw tense as he bit back a comment. “Sharidin,” he managed with a strained tone, “what happened to you? You looked nothing like this when I saw you before and the stories and witnesses all describe someone more…” He paused to consider his word choice. “Reserved.”

Sharidin’s response was offhand, answering simply to get Landelth to stop being tiresome. “That was boring and the sparkly-rainbow-shift made me a lot happier and now I can smell colors.”

“Uh, the what?” Selni asked. Hanthir noticed that she had backed up from the others again and was holding her bow with both hands and that the leopard cub was crouching behind her legs, hackles raised as it watched Sharidin.

“It made a lot of things more interesting,” Sharidin continued. “And if something of mine isn’t fun, I make it more fun. If I remember. Who cares, right?”

“And we all are considered your property, if I heard that right,” Pehril pointed out.

“Yes and— Oh! Oh good thinking! The shiny-sparkly-rainbow-transformation—” “Holy gods,” Landelth blurted. “That’s blood on your horn.”

Hanthir and the others’ eyes flicked to the dull-red horn. Now that they were close enough, Hanthir could see that the coloring was not uniform where some of it was drier or flaking off to reveal the almost painfully pink, boney horn beneath.

“Well, of course.” Sharidin tossed his mane, exasperated at being interrupted. “How else can you pin not-fun things to trees without hands? Why? Is the color boring now?” Sharidin crossed his eyes and screwed his head upward and started to laugh as he did, the sound far more human than equine. “I can’t see it up there, so I can never tell!”

While Sharidin contorted himself in an attempt to better see his own horn, Landelth turned to the others, keeping half an eye on the creature as he did. “Is this something we can fix?” he asked Pehril. “Or reverse?”

Pehril made a face and shrugged. “I have no idea.” He turned to Sygren. “What about you? Any ideas? You’ve got some connection to the divine, so are you any good with curses and things like that?”

Sygren tensed just enough under his armor for Hanthir to notice, but Hanthir doubted whether anyone aside from maybe Selni would have seen how the question nettled his cousin. “Uh, no... Not really.” By then, Sharidin had overbalanced and fallen onto his back again and was wriggling and giggling, still trying to see his horn.

“Wait, why not?” Pehril asked, genuinely curious.

“Look, I’m fairly new to this whole thing.” Hanthir knew that Sygren had actually been a pseudo holy man for a few years now, but also knew that Sygren was not terribly enthusiastic about practicing his magic or working to ingratiate himself to his god. “Don’t know how any of that works. Sorry.”

“So what do we do about this?” Selni asked quietly, likewise watching Sharidin. “Should we study him for a while? Someone can do tests or something, figure out what’s wrong.”

Pehril bobbed his head in uncertainty. “Maybe? My master might be able to pull researchers from other universities here... But what about now? I mean, it sounds like that… thing’s apparently been skewering pretty much anything it comes across.”

“Yeah, honestly still waiting for it to turn on us,” Hanthir admitted.

“How about we see if we can talk him into coming with us or somehow studying him?” Selni offered. “We can at least try to talk this through. And if he doesn’t want to come, well,” she grimaced, “we’ll probably have to capture him.”

“Don’t know how well that would go. Unicorns are fairly wild and fierce about their freedom normally,” Landelth pointed out. “Not to mention whatever in the hells is happening here.”

Selni nodded. “Then we’ll have to beat him down and tie him up or something.”

Hanthir blinked. “Holy crap. Sis, did you just suggest that we beat up a wild animal?”

“I mean, if we have to, yeah.”

“All right, yes, but this came from _you_? The person who picked up a baby leopard out of nowhere and won’t even eat meat unless they’re starving?”

“Okay, I’m not that extreme, but yeah. We’ve got bigger things to worry about than this weird unicorn-thing’s comfort or freedom. We have to beat him up to set things right? Tough shit. It sucks, but we’ve gotta do it.”

Hanthir put up his hands in surrender. “Hey, I’m not arguing. Just surprised. I’m all for it.”

“Okay,” Pehril began, “but who’s going to do the talking? Get him to agree to studies?”

That gave them pause.

“Well, it’s not gonna be me,” Sygren said. “Just looking at that thing’s pissing me off.” He jerked his thumb toward Sharidin who was back on his feet and had begun trotting around the group while chattering about something to do with making new friends.

After a brief debate, despite Pehril’s knowledge and Landelth’s familiarity with the area, Hanthir and Sygren almost insisted that Selni take the lead.

“I’m not sure that’s such a good idea,” she hedged, tracking Sharidin as he started drawing something in the dirt with his hoof.

“You convinced a wild animal to follow you,” Hanthir said, gesturing to the leopard cub, which shied behind Selni at the movement. “And you’re good with people.”

“So are you!” she hissed.

“Yeah, but I’m a dumbass, so we’re obviously not sending me.”

“Hanthir, I swear to–”

“How long are you going to be talking about me over there?” Sharidin called. Their heads snapped back to where he was scuffing out his doodle. “I mean, I like being talked about, but this is getting kind of boring.”

“And we have some idea what he does to boring things...” Sygren muttered. He gave Selni a gentle push. “Go on. We have your back.”

“You owe me a drink or something after this,” she shot back before taking another step toward Sharidin. “Sorry about that,” she said as her cub padded at her heels. “I don’t mean to be rude or anything, but how do you feel?”

Sharidin blinked its oversized eyes. “Feel?”

“Do you feel sick? Healthy? Energetic? Tired? Confused? Anything like that?”

Hanthir pressed his lips together. _Of course he’s energetic. Don’t try to warm him up to you like that._

Sharidin perked up. “Oh, I feel like a rainbow got hit with a bolt of lightning and then the rainbow turned into a shooting star that went right into my brain!”

“Uh, that’s good, right?”

“Oh, yeah, this is AWESOME!!! Do you know the word ‘awesome?’ It really doesn’t get used often enough. Don’t you think?”

“I– I guess?” Hanthir saw his sister cock her head a bit. “But, see, Lord Sharidin, we–”

“Lord?!” Sharidin squealed. “I haven’t been called that in over fifty years! Or maybe it was two weeks! This is great! Keep doing it!”

“Uh, well, Lord Sharidin...” She paused to let him wiggle and make little pleased noises. “We’re kind of worried about you. Things are pretty different all of the sudden and, well, you are too.”

“Yes, different, but this is the awesome kind of different. Can’t you tell?”

“Okay, maybe, but we’re still worried. We want you to be healthy and happy. Would you let us check you, see if anything is wrong?”

Sharidin nickered, tossing his scintillating mane and looking away as if Selni were suddenly unworthy of direct address. “I am born of a unicorn and a pegasus and thus a conduit to the divine. I would know if anything was wrong.” His eyes popped wide open. “Unless it was on my horn. Is there anything on my horn?!” he demanded in near panic.

“No, Lord Sharidin, there is nothing on your horn.”

 _Except for blood, apparently_. Hanthir was growing increasingly nervous the longer his twin stood near this potentially deranged animal. He inched his left hand toward the gladius at his hip, sliding his fingers along the top of his belt until he felt the leather wrappings around its hilt as he started to condense power in his right hand.

“Then I am fine and you don’t need to bother me. Also, why don’t we make your hair bright blue? You’d look really good with bright blue hair.” He gasped, rearing back his head in revelation. “And you would match your blue friend over there!”

“Lord Sharidin, really, it would be better for everyone if you let us check you.”

“Well, how long would it take?”

“I, uh...” Selni turned back to the group. “Pehril?”

“It could be days,” he whispered. “Weeks, depending on what we find.”

“It would be a while,” she responded to Sharidin.

“Nope.” He tossed his mane once more. Hanthir was beginning to think of some of the haughtier girls he knew whenever Sharidin did that. “Too long. Too dull.” He cocked his head to the side. “Ooh...” he mused, eyes unfocused. “I’m leaving now.” With no other explanation he turned and spread his wings.

“Wait!” Selni called. “We could make checking you fun!”

Sharidin, however, paid no mind and started trotting away and beat his wings once, twice, and lifted off with the third, blowing Hanthir’s, Selni’s, and Landelth’s longer hair back with the breeze.

Hanthir snapped his hand forward and released a bolt of inky force from his own palm just as he heard Landelth curse “Screw it!” The shot struck the flying creature’s right wing, bursting into a cloud of variegated feathers, right when one of Landelth’s arrows punched through a joint in the opposite wing. Sharidin loosed a sound that somehow blended a horse’s pained neigh with a human scream as he tumbled back toward the earth, smashing through tree branches before plowing into the forest floor.

Hanthir and Landelth spared only a moment to give each other surprised, approving glances before they and the others sprinted toward the crashed creature.

By the time Sharidin was on his hooves again, the group had him almost surrounded, with Landelth sliding into place to stand before the creature as he started pulling rope from his pack. Now that Hanthir was closer and potentially going to fight the thing, he finally noticed just how big the hybrid creature was. Any other horse's shoulders would have only come level with Sharidin's ribs, if that. In a flash, he imagined trying to ride the thing in a painfully wide split, only to have his toes dangle uselessly on each side, unable to grip the animal's flanks.

_I really hope that he reconsiders running away..._

And he did.

Sharidin gave a screaming, whinnying hiss that Hanthir would never have expected to come from an equine mouth, lowered his head, and charged horn-first at Landelth.


	12. When Diplomacy Fails

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In their search for whatever has so altered the local wildlife and magic, the group pursued the forest's guardian Sharidin. However, the unicorn-pegasus hybrid seems to have undergone his own transformation and is none too eager to subject himself to study. Desperate, Landelth and Hanthir shot him out of the sky. Desperate to escape and angered by the attack, Sharidin reacts in kind and proves more dangerous and resourceful than any of them had anticipated.

Landelth had only just enough time to shuck off his bag’s straps and twist out of the way. Sharidin’s horn impaled his backpack with a sound like an arrow punching through a sandbag as the canvas ripped and Landelth was nearly lifted off his feet as Sharidin raised his head with the bag still attached. He flowed with the motion, letting his arms slide free at the cost of dropping his bow. He fell a couple feet to the ground, stumbling and almost pirouetting to face the stampeding creature as he ripped his swords free from their sheathes. "Take out his legs!" he shouted.

"I'm not going to cripple him!" Selni spat back as she vacillated on where to aim. Hanthir had no such compunctions at this point, though.

He loosed another bolt of blackness that shredded the vibrant hide into a flutter of hair and colored flesh as it ripped a layer from one of Sharidin's haunches. He had been aiming for a knee and cursed, but the strike panicked the already frenzied Sheridin. Vision obscured by the backpack still hanging in front of its eyes, Sharidin leapt forward blindly and crashed a winged shoulder into a rotting tree. Powder and chunks of termite-ridden wood sprayed out and over the horse-like figure, tangling earthy tones into its grossly iridescent mane. The woods echoed with a hollow _crack_ as the rotting trunk split near its base, knocked askew by Sharidin's strength and raw mass. Looking again, though, Hanthir could see that the sound might not have been just from the tree, as Sharidin's left wing now dragged against the forest floor, one of the bones crooked as it drooped from the shoulders. Sharidin flung the bag free as he stumbled to find his balance and discovered Sygren charging him, shield eschewed again for a double grip on his hammer. As Sygren torqued his body to swing, though, Sharidin lurched forward to meet him, reared up, and flicked his hooves out quicker than Hanthir thought had been possible. Hanthir glimpsed his cousin's widening eyes just before the blows connected with his armored chest, knocking him off his feet and to the ground a yard away. Even as Hanthir watched, he could see muscle and flesh knitting itself back together in motley hues where he had blasted the pegacorn. 

From the corner of his eye, Hanthir could see Pehril fumbling with one trinket or other as he spoke something unintelligible and twisted his hand through the air. Before he could finish whatever formula was on his lips, though, a… pulse rippled out of Sharidin through the air. Invisible, but deep enough to thrum in Hanthir’s chest, he had only a moment to wonder what it was before he noticed something moving at his feet.

The dirt beneath him erupted in emerald-green vines that wrapped around his legs and snaked up his chest and arms, binding him to the ground like a tent set in the ground by stakes. As he started to strain and tear at the shoots before more could take hold, bright flowers blossomed along the vines with one bud opening right on his shoulder. Hanthir did a double take as he saw a _face_ on the flower, or a caricature of one, just before it opened its eyes and mouth and… started singing. The others did too, in chorus. More startled than anything else, Hanthir felt a surge of energy as adrenaline shot through his system. He ripped the vines off, cutting where he could with his short sword, and with them tore the flowers away just as they started some lyric about friendship. 

Hanthir looked and saw that Pehril was entirely entangled, the vines even starting to creep over his mouth, noticed that Landelth had already extricated himself and was leaping away from the animated vines. He then saw that Sygren, still on his back, was being slowly buried in the greenery. From his position on the ground, even Sygren’s appreciable strength did him little good, leaving him to wriggle and grasp at his bindings. Then Sharidin set his overlarge eyes on Hanthir’s immobile cousin.

Sharidin tensed to spring forward and trample over Sygren then escape when an arrow skewered the top of his right foreleg, causing it to buckle and veer him off course and closer to Landelth and Hanthir.

"Don't you fucking dare!" Selni hissed as she nocked another arrow. She was far enough back that the vines had not reached her. The cub had scrambled up into the tree above her to avoid the melee and get a better view, growling and spitting at Sharidin from safety.

_ Guess she changed her mind _ , Hanthir thought. Uncertain of whether to grin or grimace, Hanthir rushed the last few feet, wading through the thick, conjured underbrush, and closing on the unicorn-pegasus. Sharidin's good wing, though hampered by the wound Hanthir had blown into its joint, swept out at his head with enough force to probably snap his neck. Moving too fast to plan and with too much fear and adrenaline to think, Hanthir’s body acted on its own. Ducking into a crouch, Hanthir brought his gladius in an overhead slash against the oncoming wing, clipping feathers after splitting the delicate, hollow bones holding them in place. As the followthrough twisted his torso to the right, Hanthir called power to his open right hand again, except that this time he forced it to build and condense. In a whirl of black and navy blue smoke, his other sword coalesced, its blade longer and thinner than his gladius and just slightly curved. As its weight settled into his grip, Hanthir unleashed his torqued body and brought the summoned weapon to slash across Sharidin’s foreleg right beneath where his sister’s arrow jutted out.

The blade sliced Sharidin's azure hide, splitting it open to part muscle and snap tendons before coming free with an arc of too-red droplets launching from his sword. Before he could enjoy his triumph, though, that same leg gave way entirely. Sharidin toppled toward Hanthir, who tried to spring back and out of the way. Weighed down by his own armor and slipping on the newly tangled terrain, he only managed to push himself far enough to avoid getting pulverized by the falling creature’s shoulders. Instead, the flopping wing rammed into his flank, driving him to the ground where he lay covered in a jumble of feathers, leaves, and dirt. As Hanthir tried to extract himself, Sharidin was using hooves and wing alike to right himself, pressing Hanthir deeper into the ground and pinning him. With his breath being driven from his body and his ribs starting to creak beneath the pressure, he barely glimpsed Landelth when the other half-elf leapt to stand over Sharidin's head and lay his blades against the forest guardian's neck.

"Don't move," Landelth said, trying not to pant. Sharidin froze. A shimmering golden light flared around Sharidin’s body as a physical shield that pushed Landelth’s blades back and drove Hanthir nearly an inch deeper into the earth. Sharidin took the instant of disorientation to try to stand, using Hanthir as support and crushing him in the process as he attempted to stand on his sliced and punctured legs.

Landelth recovered almost immediately, though. With a shout, he hacked down at the shield with his whole body behind the flickering blades. The shield resisted for half a breath before the blades slipped through and past the light to carve deep gashes in Sharidin’s shoulder and leg, leaving both forelegs lacerated between these cuts and Hanthir’s. Unable to stand and huffing and screaming again in pain, Sharidin slumped back to the ground and lay still, watching Landelth. An instant later, the shield dissipated into little motes of firefly light and Landelth once more laid his blades against Sharidin’s throat. 

“I said,” Landelth growled between panting, “‘Don’t… move.’” 

“Ooh!” Sharidin chirped, blinking up at Landelth. “Your hands… are shaking!” His breaths were labored, between the wounds and his exertion. “Did I… scare you? Maybe… I should just leave and–”

“Yeah, I’m shaking,” Landelth interrupted. Hanthir realized that the hunter was not struggling to speak due to fatigue so much as simply trying to force his voice to work. “Which should be even more reason… for you to stop moving. I might panic and slit your throat.” At that, Sharidin froze.

Without the massive creature writhing atop him, Hanthir was able to haul himself out then scramble on hands and knees to get away and upright, panting all the while and clutching his ribs. As he did, Liendel moved one blade and pressed its tip down against one of Sharidin's legs. “Don’t… even think of running. You twitch or do anything and I'll have to skewer your leg and pin it to the ground. I  _ really _ don't want to do that.” He seemed to be getting his breathing and speech back under control and his hands were steadier.

"You've... You are not a very nice person." Landelth’s arrow pushed its way free and dropped to the forest floor as Sharidin’s wing joint began regenerating tendons and realigning itself.

"That's impressive coming from something that's been killing whatever it comes across."

"Only boring things!” Sharidin mewled. "Fun and happy things shouldn't be hurt!"

"Tell that to whatever animal you painted your horn with."

"That squirrel was mocking me," Sharidin pouted. "He had it coming."

"To be fair," Hanthir said as he brushed himself off, wincing, ”those guys always seemed like little jerks to me."

"Thank you!" Sharidin said, turning his head to look at Hanthir until Landelth pressed his blades harder against Sharidin's flesh, drawing from his leg blood so bright red that a ruby would have blushed with shame. Sharidin rolled his oversized eyes to Landelth. ”You will make a much nicer painting than the squirrel or these other meanies you're with."

Selni ran over to where Sygren had managed to regain his feet after pulling off the vines. He seemed to be taking especial care to crush all of the peppy, singing flowers beneath his boot. "You okay, Sygren?"

"Not really," he said, grimacing as he snuffed out another song, "but I'll live. Don't think he broke anything. I’m just rattled and more than a little pissed off."

"Can you help me hold him down?" Landelth asked. "The others can tie him up." He jerked his head toward where his pack lay, some of its contents peeking out of the tear. "Pehril, you think you can take a look at him? Get a sense of what's going on?” The scholar had just freed himself from the vines and stumbled away. "'Tie?'" Sharidin asked. "No thanks. That doesn't sound fun."

"Sorry, but we have to."

“No no.” He twitched his head in the tiniest shake. “Sorry. I'm really not interested.” Before Landelth could respond, Sharidin's vibrant blue hide began to shine with a white light. Confused and panicking, maybe anticipating another shield, Landelth drove his sword down into Sharidin's leg to pin him in place.

"Wait," Pehril called, spitting out a piece of vine. "How are you going to keep him from–” 

Sharidin's body turned insubstantial and Landelth’s blade plunged through the glimmering light and into the forest floor. The misty, bright image of Sharidin compressed into a pinprick before the tiny star winked out entirely, leaving Landelth’s blade impaled through a clump of grasses that gradually began to rise from where Sharidin’s body had crushed them.

  


* * *

  


They all stood there for a moment, stunned, Hanthir blinking. "Is... Is he invisible?"

"No," Landelth and Selni said almost at once.

"I don't see anything moving the grass or dirt," Selni explained. "He's gone."

Landelth nodded slowly. "Yeah... but he's still here. In the forest, I mean," he amended when the others cast confused looks his way. "I can feel him. I think he's less than a mile..." He panned his head around, like a dog sniffing the air, before pointing with his remaining sword to the northwest. "That way."

“Well, he'll run miles away by the time we reach him." Sygren said, ineffectually massaging the metal plates over his chest where Sharidin had kicked him. "Now what?"

"Well, he's pretty badly hurt," Selni pointed out. "I don't think he can fly and even if he can run, he won't be able to for long."

"Problem is, I saw his wounds closing up even while we talked," Landelth said. "Chances are, he’ll be back in shape within an hour if not minutes."

"But will it have side effects like Sygren's healing did?" Pehril asked, stepping forward as he tucked a small, glistening something into a pouch.

"Maybe. I've got no idea, at this point."

"We should probably assume that he can heal," Selni said. "I mean, Sygren turned weird colors, but he could still put his body back together. Safer to bet that the unicorn-thing's magic will work like that too."

"So he's just going to fly away," Pehril stated.

Landelth grimaced. "Probably. Don't think he'd stick around to let us chat with him again after all of that either. He'll bolt the minute he senses us getting near."

"So, what? We just give up?" Hanthir asked. He saw Pehril's and Landelth's eyes flick to the sword still stuck in the earth, but did not comment. "No, that's probably not a good option.” Landelth scowled. “We don't have any other leads to pursue."

"So we're going to just chase this guy in circles for the rest of eternity." Sygren's voice was flat, lacking even his usual sarcasm. "And if we get close to him, he can just disappear again." Now that the others were looking away, Hanthir dismissed his longer blade, letting it dissipate into that same dark mist that it had appeared in.

"Maybe?" Landelth answered. "Honestly, I didn't even know that he could do that."

"Wait, what?" This time, everyone turned to Pehril, who looked incredulous at best. "Almost every story about hunting a unicorn says that they usually disappear like that. That's the hard part about hunting them. You have to find and catch them again before they can do it again."

They were silent. “Shit,” Selni finally muttered. "Should've remembered that."

Landelth looked between her and Pehril. "Wait, you both knew about this?"

"I mean, it's not exactly common knowledge, but it's not transmutative metatheory either," Pehril shrugged. "I figured you had something planned. That’s why I was surprised.”

"I don't know anything about trying to actually  _ hunt _ unicorns!" Landelth cried. "Why would I?!”

"Well, you're kind of neighbors with one! I figured you would have known."

Landelth clenched his jaw and squeezed his eyes shut, taking a steading breath and then another. "Great. Good to know."

"So..." Sygren began, "is there anything else we should know before we go running after him again?"

Landelth let out a frustrated huff and pulled his blade from the ground, cleaning it on his cloak before sheathing it again. "Well, even when things were normal, his healing powers weren't perfect. Heard of a kid who got stuck here and nearly smashed her head open on a rock. Sharidin fixed her for the most part and she didn't have anything worse than a scar after a few years, but she still had a scabbed-over gash in her scalp when the guards finally found her. If Sygren's healing hasn't changed that much, Sharidin's probably hasn't either. Not proud of this, but we did some pretty serious damage to his wings. Joints and fragile parts like that might take longer to heal, so I kind of doubt that he'll be able to fly. At least for a while." "So we find him quickly, beat the shit out of him again, tie him up and then... what?" Sygren looked back and forth. "Pehril already said he can't study this thing by himself and I don't think we'll be able to keep him from teleporting again tomorrow."

That made everyone pause. "Think you could distract him?" Pehril asked. “Keep him entertained long enough for someone to go back to town and get my master, maybe some others?”

"Distract him with what?" Selni asked. "Finger painting?"

"I mean, that honestly doesn't sound like a bad idea," Hanthir mused. "He did seem to like painting, just with blood instead."

"Well, I'm sorry, but I don't have any paint with me."

"Really?" Hanthir asked, genuinely surprised. “But you love to paint!"

"Well, not when I have to walk around in the forest for weeks on end. You think I’m going to be carrying an easel and everything else wherever I go?” She paused. "Well, I do have some charcoal and pens, actually.” 

“Pehril,” Landelth began, "if we tied him up, would he still be bound if he teleported somewhere?”

"Maybe? Depends on the nature of the spell or whatever innate ability he's using. I'd need to see him do it again and be prepared to examine the process. If he was tied up when he appeared somewhere, though, that would leave him vulnerable to other animals or monsters until we found him."

Landelth sighed. "Fair point."

"Then again, the distraction idea might not be a bad one after all..."

"Wait, we really going to do finger painting?!" Hanthir asked, making a show of perking up and trying to lighten the mood. Selni rolled her eyes and smacked him lightly on the back of the head as he giggled. He even managed to not wince as his bruised ribs protested.

"I mean, you can if you want to," Pehril offered. "Thing is, he's still a living thing, so chances are he needs a proper, real rest before he can teleport again, just like I do before I can channel more magic." Hanthir nodded. His own magic worked differently, but Sygren was much the same, so he could imagine the principle. "If we caught him and managed to keep him awake until we found help, then that would probably keep him from teleporting away. Mental fatigue and sleep deprivation screws up everything, including using magic.”

"So that means just keeping him awake in any way possible?" Selni asked.

"Pretty much."

Hanthir's hand shot up. "I volunteer to do the honors! I have always wanted to have a sleepover with a unicorn-pegasus-thing!”

"We should do it in shifts," Sygren advised, ignoring him. "Send Pehril with someone to guard him back to Fandír while we make sure Sharidin doesn't sleep."

"That's going to be one seriously cranky unicorn..." Selni mused.

"Well, we still have to find him first," Landelth interrupted, grabbing his pack from the ground, inspecting to make sure that the tear would not spill the contents, and marching away. "I feel him starting to move again. Come on."


	13. A Trap of Sorts

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Knowing that they cannot chase Sharidin with any hope of catching him, they instead devise an... improvised lure for the mad guardian.

Before they had even been walking for five minutes, they came across the body of what once might have been a squirrel. There was a puncture mark in the bark of a nearby tree where Sharidin had impaled the animal. It looked like he had bashed and scraped the body across the bark to wring out the blood and paint the tree a mottled, dark red that was nearly indistinguishable from the rest of the bark now that it was dried.

Seeing that, Pehril forced himself to swallow, jogged up to Landelth, and asked “So how do you plan to catch this thing?”

“‘This thing,’” Landelth said with some apparent frustration, “is intelligent and has dominion over the entire forest, or at least to a certain extent. Honestly, I’m not sure how this is going to work. The best that I can figure is we somehow lure it and use a trap.”

“And your plan for that would be…?”

“Well,” Landelth began, “normally Sharidin is not attracted to much. It’s not like he has a sweet tooth or is drawn to virgins or anything stupid like that. And yes,  _ that _ part of the myths I know,” he said in response to Pehril’s look. “Now, though… I’m not sure. Hells, he could even be listening to us as we talk. It’s impossible to know.”

Pehril thought for a moment, replaying the conversation with Sharidin in his head. “Well… maybe something ‘interesting’ would get his attention?”

Landelth nodded. “I was thinking along the same lines, but I’m not really sure what would qualify as ‘interesting’ to him.”

“Well, he seems to be a big proponent of color…” Pehril trailed off, considering.  _ He grew violent when something became boring, at least that’s what I got from what he said, but he liked color and decorations. Maybe he likes games? Not too much of a long-shot, since he seems so childish… _ “Any chance any of you know how to act?” he called over his shoulder.

Sygren, Selni, and Hanthir exchanged confused, dubious glances, before Hanthir asked “What exactly do you mean by ‘act?’ As in a performance or on stage? Or do you just mean ‘lie?’” 

“Yes.” Pehril managed not to smile at his own dumb wordplay.

“Yeah,” Hanthir replied almost immediately. “Why?”

“That’s a good question.” Landelth cast a querying glance at Pehril. “Why does it matter?"

“Wait…” Selni interjected. “Are you seriously thinking about—” 

“Shhhhh!” Pehril hissed, putting a long, slender finger to his blue lips. “Maybe… Okay, everyone gather around…”

Hoping that Sharidin’s awareness of the forest was not total, they gathered in a tight circle, whispering as Pehril laid out a suggested plan of action. 

After a few minutes of debating, vehemently rejected ideas, and some rather scandalized expressions, they pulled apart. Sygren looked worried, Selni mildly sickened, Landelth dubious, and Hanthir was grinning from ear to ear.

“Fine. I’ll do it,” Selni began, “but you owe me.” She pointed at the entire group. “All of you.”

“She means it,” Hanthir confirmed solemnly. “She’s not going to forget that.”

Pehril nodded, trying not to grimace. Wondering for what felt like the hundredth time whether he was among mentally unstable murderers, Pehril started looking for a place to set up. Consulting Landelth, they soon found a clearing and set to work. On the way there, though, they encountered more of Sharidin’s “decorations,” including eviscerated animals and monsters plus creatures that had been rammed so hard by his horn that they were still affixed to trees. At one point, he had even strung something’s intestines through a tree’s branches and a bush like streamers before sprinkling it with the sparkling, rainbow powder that now came off of his wings.

They finally stopped at the clearing and, while Pehril, Sygren, and Hanthir started hunting for wildflowers, Landelth paused for a moment, eyes closed. Soon he opened them and pointed. He said something to Selni before they both slipped back into the forest as the leopard cub padded after them, leaving some of their excess gear behind.

No one had brought anything particularly fine or eye-catching in their packs. Why would they if they were traveling in a forest? The best they had were the crystal and small diamond that Pehril needed for spells and was unwilling to advertise to dangerous strangers. Those and Perhil’s aging robes and Sygren’s mask were perhaps the most ostentatious possessions that they carried, but neither of them were willing to take them off and turn them into decorations. So they improvised.

Sygren ferried armfuls of flowers back to the clearing, plucking even the smallest hyacinths to contribute. As they worked, Pehril could not help listening for heavy wings or hoofbeats, half expecting Sharidin to break into the clearing and charge at them in a rage for defiling his forest. Over an hour passed, though, and there was no sign of any living creatures aside from themselves and some birds and squirrels.

Hanthir braided flower crowns for everyone then a couple of extras, surprising Pehril with how easily and neatly he did so. By the time he finished, Pehril had spread their cloaks and blankets into a wide mat on the dry grass and dirt, set out all of their eating implements, and was starting to construct a few small fire pits from loose stones, far from the mat.

As Hanthir laid a second string of flowers along some nearby tree limbs, Sygren returned with his second bundle of dry sticks. Dumping the faggot beside Pehril and undoing the rope holding it together, he turned to fetch more then froze. “Hey!” he called to the others before pointing to the sky. “That’s the way that Selni and Landelth went.” Pehril looked up to see him watching a diffuse plume of black smoke rising above the treetops in the distance. “I… Maybe I should go after them?” he suggested. “Just to double check, see if they're okay.”

“Yeah,” Hanthir agreed as he finished draping the braid on a low hanging branch, “but if you left the way they went, they could be coming back a different way. You’d miss them and maybe get lost. But they might need our help now. Not really a good way to go here.” Hanthir watched the rising smoke and his lips thinned into a bloodless line. “Gotta admit, though, I kind of want to go after them too. It doesn’t look too far either. Might be in trouble.”

Pehril nodded, feeling his stomach flutter. “Mosts forests don’t start burning on their own.”

Sygren gave him a sidelong look. “ _ No _ forest just bursts into flames out of nowhere.”

“Well, actually, there are several kinds near the savannah area of—” 

“Okay, that’s interesting,” Sygren interrupted, “but not really the point.”

Pehril felt himself shrink slightly, as if his tall frame could be hidden from the others and not gain attention. He had latched onto trivia, rather than think about whatever might be happening just out of sight. “Fair point.” 

__ “I’m going,” Sygren announced, unhooking his shield from his back and readjusting the mask on his head as he moved away.

“Me too.” Hanthir strode after his cousin, looking over his shoulder to say “You want to watch our things or come with us?”

“Uh, stay here alone?” Pehril shook his head and caught up to them in two long strides. “That seems like a decidedly  _ bad _ idea, so no.” He was still considering how he could even contribute to the search when, just a few yards into the trees, they stopped, hearing something in the undergrowth. Rhythmic, almost, as something heavy slid across the ground, stopped, slid, stopped…

Sygren raised his shield, unhooking his hammer while Hanthir drew his shorter sword and coalesced that inky, blue-black substance that both fascinated and chilled Pehril in his other hand. Staying behind the pair, Pehril belatedly pulled out his favorite crystal, letting part of his mind focus on the familiar shape and matrices as he watched the woods.

“You guys could have waited, you know,” Selni’s distant voice called from ahead of them. Pehril blinked, trying to discern where it had come from. “Could use a hand with this thing, though.” Then Pehril noticed both Selni's and Landelth’s forms moving between the trees, just barely discernible against the surrounding foliage. They had not been trying to move stealthily, judging by their postures, but somehow he had only managed to notice them when they were barely sixty feet away.  _ Perhaps their plain clothes help them to blend in. _

Hanthir and Sygren walked forward. “Sure, but what is— Dear gods above!” Hanthir jumped back, nearly firing the nascent energy still gathered in his hand. “What  _ is _ that?!”

Pehril felt his skin crawl when he saw what Landelth and Selni were dragging. Each of them towed a long, spindly, chitinous arm tipped with two lengthy, curved claws that attached to a deep indigo and black… thing. Torn between revulsion and fascination, Pehril stepped closer, lowering his arm and crystal without noticing.

“Ettercap,” Liendel answered with a grimace.

The creature was on its humped back, which was covered in a malleable, knobbly carapace akin to boiled leather. Its distended, protruding, and lighter colored belly was comparatively soft and pockmarked with arrow wounds smeared with a greenish-yellow ichor. The two legs were tipped with similar claws and articulated much like a hound’s, indicating that it could run or launch itself explosively forward. Its head, seeming almost too small for the large body, stuck a little outward from its hunched body. Possessed of sharp fangs, each about as wide as three of Pehril’s fingers held together, it also had two pairs of compound eyes, one larger than the other, between which was a neat slice a few inches long.

Looking back at the returning pair, Pehril noticed that, while Selni was about as pristine as a person could be after living in the forest, Landelth’s breastplate had new stains and his left pauldron showed a shallow score in the steel. Some airy, glistening material was also trailing from parts of his clothing. “Are you all right?” Pehril asked, dubious. He did not see any wounds, but he noticed that Landelth was relieved to stop moving and catch his breath.

“Yeah. Could have maybe used a hand, but we’re not hurt.”

“What’s with the smoke?” Hanthir asked.

“We set fire to this thing’s nest,” Selni explained, nodding toward the corpse.

“Surprised you didn't hear the fanfare from here.” Landelth hefted the arm he held and both he and Selni started moving forward again with the others at their sides. The ever present leopard cub followed behind, pouncing and batting at the dead thing’s feet as they jostled and jumped while bumping along the forest floor. “The fire we set almost instantly turned into that insane barrage of colored sparks and sounds,” Landelth continued, huffing with effort. “I think it actually helped spread the fire faster. The female couldn’t even get out of her nest. Well, she was laying a brood, but even so she couldn’t have made it out unscathed normally.”

“There was another?” Pehril asked, suddenly fighting the urge to look over his shoulder. 

“Yeah. Might’ve come here together.”

“You get any unwanted attention from all that?” Sygren asked.

“Well, Sharidin showed up,” Selni mentioned, “but he ran off when one of those crazy sparks hit him. Scared the shit out of him like it would a regular horse. Literally. Left gold-colored droppings behind.”

Landelth nodded. “Thing is, unicorns and ettercaps hate each other. It really makes me worry about Sharidin if he’s left these two unmolested long enough for them to web a section of the woods and make a nest. Good thing we found them when we did. Left alone any longer and we would’ve had an infestation of these things and probably some giant spiders as well.”

“How’d you even know where to find them?” Hanthir asked. “Get lucky?”

“He sensed it,” Pehril said, realizing as he did. “Like you did with the bear and Sharidin earlier. You said you sense things that shouldn’t be here, or something like that.”

Landelth gave a timid shrug, his rough and dirty appearance suddenly making him look more like a boy just back from playing in the woods than a forester. “Something like that. My teacher and I helped hunt a few of these when some fairies asked my hometown for help. These things were setting webs and eating anything that got caught in them, including the fairies.”

Back in the clearing, Landelth and Selni each also plopped a small bag of berries onto opposite ends of the spread cloaks and blankets. “Those are edible,” Landelth said, pointing to Selni’s bag. “These,” he pointed to his own, “are very much not.”

“Unless you want to be vomiting or running to fertilize the bushes every five minutes for the rest of the day,” Selni amended. “Or dying. That could happen too.”

As Landelth and Sygren hogtied the ettercap’s limbs behind its back, Selni contributed some last minute, tasteful criticisms and adjustments to the scenery, much to Hanthir’s chagrin, who insisted that what they had was fine while he built the unlit fires. Once finished, Landelth gathered them to his side. Speaking a few words that even Pehril could not understand over a carved, wooden pendant pulled from beneath his shirt, Landelth’s open palm filled as motes of dust and wisps of vapor sped to his hand and coalesced into ten round, oblong black shapes. 

He plucked two and held them out to Sygren. “Everyone should take a couple,” he suggested. “They can heal your most serious injuries at least enough for you to walk on your own again if you eat one. We still don’t know what healing magic does here, exactly,” he admitted, “but if someone’s on the verge of dying, then taking a chance with these is probably better than the alternative.” As an afterthought, he added “Oh, and one of these has enough nutrients for a day, but you’ll still feel hungry.”

Sygren gave the berries a sidelong look, likely remembering what his skin had looked like after his own magical healing, but Hanthir took a pair and the others soon followed. Pehril was hard pressed to find a place on his person where they wouldn’t get squashed if he fell, but he figured that his components pouch with the stiff leather pockets was his best bet.  _ Just hope I don’t need them. _

After tucking hers away, Selni asked “So, we ready for this?”

“Probably about as ready as we’re going to be,” Landelth replied, looking to the others for confirmation. Even though his stomach was ready to join a circus as an acrobat, Pehril nodded, fingering the contents of his pouch. 

Landelth tossed the end of the rope pinioning the ettercap’s limbs over a thick branch then, as if they were raising a banner, he and Sygren hauled the ettercap’s corpse so that it dangled at eye level. Its head lolled as the body gently twisted first one way and then the other.

Selni’s face had turned bloodless and her lips were pursed in a line. “So we do that part first or later?”

“Maybe a last resort?” Pehril suggested. He wasn’t a fan of that part of the plan either. The others nodded again, yet they still stood around, unsure.

“So…” Landelth began, tying the group's other coil of rope to his belt. “I guess we start having fun?”

“Yeah, good luck having fun when you’re trying to force it,” Sygren grumbled.

“We could start with a game or something,” Selni suggested.

“You know any we could play?”

“Uh… I can’t think of anything offhand. Hanthir?”

Hanthir blew a raspberry. “Don’t look at me. I don’t even have cards or anything.”

They halfheartedly brainstormed for a few seconds before Pehril put in “Well, it doesn’t help that we’re all tense, so let’s at least start something we don’t need to really think about.” He walked to one of the fire pits and, muttering the spell’s formula, conjured a flame among the sticks. 

As he started on the next one, the first changed from a lapping orange flame to shades of pink and green and everything in between as it began to spark and hiss then let off a barrage of loud bands, whistling sparks, and streaming sparkles that seared the grass. Hurrying so as not to get caught by one of them, he managed to light all four fires then hustled back to the others who sat on the improvised mat. Now that they knew what to expect, watching the volatile fires elicited startled, but excited gasps and exclamations from the group when a particularly large or colorful pattern exploded above the wood. Sometimes these concussive bursts knocked a stick or two free, but whenever that happened Pehril simply summoned a silvery, translucent hand to pick up the smoldering pieces and toss them back in, lest he get too close.

Sure that the fires were “burning” on their own, Pehril ventured “Have you guys ever played Guard’s Gamble?” Speaking over the small cacophony, he explained the game. Within a few minutes, they were shouting encouragement or curses at each other and, despite everything, laughing. Once in a while, someone would pop a berry or a piece of jerky into their mouths, though none of them ate much. Despite actually managing to enjoy themselves, they knew what was coming and full stomachs or cramps would get in the way. Maybe even get someone killed.

As Pehril considered having another hunk of bread, Landelth and Selni looked up almost simultaneously, watching the skyline. The others quieted and, even over the screeching and popping fires, he could hear a slow, rhythmic _Whump. Whump. Whump._

They all fell perfectly still and silent, waiting for the mad guardian to arrive.


	14. Clipping His Wings

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The group has managed to attract Sharidin's attention, though what that attention will entail is yet to be seen.

A flash of gaudy color shot into view above them, circling once before coming to a hard landing in the clearing with Sharidin’s hooves digging deep trenches into the dirt and tossing clumps of grass before he slowed and cantered their way. “Can I play?!” he shouted, wide eyed and bouncing as he moved. “Can I? Please? Please? Please please please please please please please?!?!”

Considering that they and Sharidin had done the next best thing to trying to murder each other scant hours before, most of the group nearly ripped their weapons free of their sheathes before Sharidin’s words sank in. He came to a stop in front of them, stamping excitedly as the group fumbled to put their weapons back surreptitiously.

Sygren was the first to recover, though not without some difficulty. “Uh… Sure! You know how to play?”

“Yes yes yup! I watched the blue one explain the rules and saw everyone playing before I got here.”

Pehril found that notion exceptionally unsettling and was glad that he wasn’t the one who had elected to speak. “Then you can be the guard next,” Sygren said, managing to maintain a smile. They continued the game, albeit with somewhat less enthusiasm and considerably less relaxed. If Sharidin noticed their change in demeanor, however, he either didn’t show it or his own enthusiasm overshadowed his inhibitions. Lacking hands, he was frankly terrible at the game, but the group pretended that he was doing well, allowing themselves to lose as if playing with a toddler. As they played, Pehril noticed Landelth’s intense gaze on Sharidin, his eyes flicking over the creature’s form as if inspecting a machine and cataloguing everything he saw.

Whenever one of the fires started to burn down, Sharidin would either pout of beg for Pehril to add more wood until the flames rose and were shooting variegated explosives into the air once more. They had been afraid that these fires would anger Sharidin, but it seemed that their gamble on the colorful, “fun” display had paid off. 

After some time, though, when the sun was just kissing the tops of the trees, Selni suggested that they take a break to eat and drink. Sharidin was only too happy to comply with that too.

They passed him dried fruit, salted crackers, and biscuits. Since Landelth had told them that Sharidin could not be poisoned, let him eat the berries unsuitable for the rest of the group, which Sharidin lapped up enthusiastically with his long tongue. 

“So, Sharidin,” Selni said after a few minutes of forced levity and conversation, “do you want to be friends?”

“Uh, duh!” He twisted his horned head sideways and stuck out his tongue. “You guys are fun!”

“Thanks. You’re fun too.” She glanced at the others. Hanthir nodded encouragement. “So, Sharidin, you sure you wouldn’t want to hang out with us for a few days? Bring some other people to look at you? It could be fun!” she hurriedly added. Even so, Sharidin almost immediately shook his head, which bounced his mane about, sprinkling sparkling glitter over their cloaks. Pehril managed to keep his expression neutral as some landed on him. 

“No no no. I remember you said something about tests. That’s not fun. Not doing that. Nope. I’ll leave right now if you ask about more tests and researchers and that sort of thing.”

“That’s fine!” Landelth blurted as Sharidin started to rise. “We won’t we won’t! We can just play a game instead. Are you done eating?”

Sharidin considered a moment. He reached over and lapped up some of the more edible berries then nodded. “Yup!” He looked over toward the dead ettercap, still swinging from its cord. “What were you going to do with that?”

“Oh, uh… Another game,” Landelth finally managed. “Before that, though, did you know about that thing and its mate?”

“Oh yes.” Sharidin looked up, half closing his eyes in superiority and disdain. “I had meant to deal with them on my own, but, well, one thing or another got in the way. Then you came and completed the task for me anyhow. It was rather enjoyable, watching you butcher that creature then listening to the other hiss and scream as it burned. The popping, sizzling sounds it made were quite satisfying!” He opened his eyes and looked back at the hanging thing, wiggling in place. “So what’s the game? What are we gonna play?”

Landelth seemed to take a moment to steady himself after Sharidin’s explanation. “Well,” Landelth said, standing, “it might be easier to show you.” The others followed. Hanthir rummaged in his pack a moment then hurried to join them in front of the ettercap once he retrieved a strip of cloth. Landelth retrieved the hefty, tough stick that they had left there. “Hanthir, you mind blindfolding me?” Hanthir did so. Landelth, eyes covered with the strip of grey cloth and holding the stick close to his chest, said “Now one of them will spin me around, so that I don’t know which way the ettercap is.” Hanthir did so, turning Landelth around ten times as fast as his hands could manage. 

Wobbling on his feet and struggling to keep from tripping on the uneven ground and patchy grass, Landelth continued. “Now, I’ve got ten seconds to hit the ettercap. If I break open its back or belly and spill out its guts, then I win!” Selni and Sygren could not hide their at least mild disgust, though Pehril noted how easily Landelth managed to say it. The woodsman wobbled around, feeling with the stick for whatever was in front of him as the others hastened out of the way. At seven seconds, he poked the ettercap then, taking the stick in both hands, hit the dead monster as hard as he could in a flurry of blows. Some strikes bounced from the armored back and others left deep scrapes or even dents in the distended belly while one knocked one of the creature’s fangs askew. Then Hanthir called a stop. Panting and still trying to find his balance, Landelth pulled off the blindfold. “Simple as that.”

Sharidin’s eyes gleamed with eagerness and his wings fluttered in excitement. “Oh oh oh! Can I be next? Please?”

“Well…” Landelth looked at the others, as if seeking their approval. “I don’t see why not! Though I don’t think you can hold a stick, so you’ll have to use your hooves or horn. Is that—”

“Yes yes!” Sharidin happily interrupted. “I can do that! Now, blindfold me so that I can face this horrible foe!” Giving each other sidelong glances, the others made plenty of space for the oversized creature as Landelth approached. Sharidin bent his head and, as best he could, Landelth tied the blindfold over Sharidin’s eyes. It was not a large enough cloth and chances were that Sharidin could see through the bottom or top of the blindfold, even if he lacked his awareness of the forest, but it was enough. Landelth gently took hold of Sharidin’s mane and began to spin him, running in circles to guide Sharidin around. Considering his bulk and the great wings on his back, though, Sharidin’s spinning proved to be a somewhat dangerous proposition and the others had to jump back further or else get trampled or laid out by one of the wings, which slammed into the ettercap’s body once, sending it swinging back and forth. 

Ending so that Sharidin was facing more or less toward the ettercap, Landelth backed up and called “Okay! Start!” As he did, Selni crept back to the mat where she had laid her bow. Hanthir slowly, silently, drew his left sword and summoned the not-quite-straight black and blue-tinged blade into his other hand. Sygren muttered a spell that seemed to have no effect, except that Pehril noticed Hanthir, Selni, and Landelth stand a little straighter. He then pulled out his shield and slipped his hammer from its holster while Pehril flexed and stretched his fingers.

Sharidin charged forward, laughing as he blew straight past the corpse, clipping it with his winged shoulder before turning around. He reared up and lashed out blindly with both hooves, one of which connected with a meaty  _ crunch _ in the ettercap’s hip, sending it spinning as Sharidin jabbed with his horn, trying to skewer the thing. He missed then backed up and charged again with a whoop. Landelth used the sound of galloping hooves to overwhelm the slither of one sword sliding out of its scabbard.

Sharidin’s horn struck home, ramming into the side of the ettercap’s ribs and lodging in the tough, leathery skin. The force and momentum nearly tore down the branch that the target was hanging from, yet it managed to hold. Giggling, Sharidin tried to find his balance as the heavy body impaled on his horn swung his head back and forth. “I think I did it!” he cried. “I won!”

In an instant, Landelth brought his sword down in a two-handed blow on the joint between Sharidin’s body and his wing. The blade sliced deep, but skipped off the bone. The force, however, sent an audible _crack_ through the air, as bone cracked and split, tearing ligaments free as the wing went lame. Sygren held forward his hammer and, with a word, produced an arrow of blinding light that lanced into Sharidin’s muscular chest. Instead of blowing the flesh to shreds, though, the light seemed to rush into Sharidin, like fire sucked into a chimney, then burst out of the creature in small, pale flames that left Sharidin’s hide bleached where they touched as he contorted in pain. Even as the flames dissipated, leaving a shimmering radiance around Sharidin, Selni’s arrow punched into one of his haunches with a sharp, meaty _thunk_ that nearly collapsed the leg under him. The impact scattered the radiance, like spooking butterflies from their perches, yet did little to alter Hanthir’s course as he dashed forward and swung both blades across Sharidin’s front legs. 

Even from a distance, Pehril was almost certain that he saw something like inky smoke snap to Sharidin and begin crawling over his vibrant coat just before the blows landed. When they did, Pehril heard something snap like a taught rope breaking before Sharidin collapsed onto one of his knees, an injured wing straining against the ground to balance him. He thrust back onto his hindquarters and lashed out with his wounded forelegs, but Hanthir leapt back to avoid the retaliatory kick that flopped weakly without much muscle to support it and was pulled off course by the weight stuck to Sharidin’s head. While reared back, Sharidin presented his soft stomach in time for Pehril to levitate the diamond in his hand, focus the ambient magic, and launch a sphere of shimmering air. It splashed against Sharidin’s hide, instantly sprouting ice crystals from the moisture in the air and turning his underbelly brittle and dark with frostbite.

Falling to all fours and shivering with pain and cold, Sharidin wrenched his head forward and surged against the rope. The branch snapped and Sharidin’s rough horn tore free from the monster’s corpse with a splatter of ichor and flesh. Turning to track the movement, Pehril saw something around Sharidin waver before he… 

Pehril stopped caring about Sharidin.

Why would he even bother trying to hurt and capture a dangerous, insane creature? For research? There was plenty more to study. Things like his books of theory and technology. Things that would not threaten to kill him. 

He lowered his hand, slipping the diamond back into its pouch. He noticed Hanthir and Sygren likewise hesitate and step back as Sharidin thrashed his head, trying to dislodge the blindfold. Dispassionate, Pehril watched as sinews and flesh slowly knit back together in Sharidin’s legs and wing while the blackened and bleached patches of hide slowly regained their vibrant violet.

An arrow drove into Sharidin’s shoulder and another into his breast, causing silvery, too-red blood to fly from his mouth in droplets as he coughed with the impact. Then Landelth, ducking back in, brought his blade down on the healing wing with a two-handed swing. The sword carved through sinew and cracked into exposed bone as it cut so deeply into the joint that Pehril briefly glimpsed the ragged socket before blood washed over the wound to obscure it. 

Pehril frowned, wondering why these two even bothered, and was about to turn away when Sharidin’s weighty hoof flailed out and slammed into Landelth’s left shoulder, clipping the edge of his breastplate and denting the pauldron, spinning Landelth and knocking the young man to roll on the ground. 

The sound of hoof against steel seemed to jar Pehril awake. As Sygren and Hanthir likewise tore from their apathy, Sharidin dislodged the blindfold enough to see with one eye and aimed at a gap in the ring that the group had created in surrounding him. A shimmering, iridescent bubble formed around Sharidin. Another of Selni’s arrows flew toward his ribs, but seemed to skip and turn against the light, speeding into the canopy above.

Realizing the creature’s intent, Pehril thrust his hand into his pouch, seeking his crystal focus. Something soft burst into a pulpy, slick mess under his fingers. Confused and startled, he wrenched the hand back only to realize that he had crushed one of the berries that Landelth had given him, smearing a thick, red and indigo pulp over the inside of his pouch. Cursing and hoping that he wouldn't need the berry later, he retrieved his focus just as Sharidin tore through Hanthir’s left arm with his horn before knocking the man aside with his shoulder as he charged past. Gaining speed in his limping gait, Sharidin was almost out of range when Pehril twisted his fingers through the air to gather magic and spoke a word that shunted the energy from his body, through the crystal, and to Sharidin in a gust of intangible influence.

Sharidin shook his head once, cried out, then tripped, stumbling and tumbling to the ground. Even then, his head thrashed around, eyes wide and wild as he kicked and flailed at the earth. The others paused for a moment, confused, but when Sharidin found purchase on the ground and began to rise, Landelth ripped his other sword free, dashed forward, and began hacking at Sharidin’s haunches and legs in a rhythmic, smooth whirl of steel. He could not reach Sharidin’s other side, though, laying against the ground as it was. Sharidin lashed out with a donkey kick from the ground, even using the otherwise pinned leg. Landelth only barely managed to twist and roll will the blow as it slammed against his hip. Had he not, Pehril suspected that the bones would have shattered.

As Landelth spun and fell to one knee, Hanthir struck again with his good arm at the exposed wing and the black blade actually struck  _ through _ the bone two feet from the wingtip. That section of wing fell limp, the only thing keeping it attached to Sharidin being the tangle of feathers and stray scraps of skin. Sygren jumped forward, hammer raised to slam into Sharidin’s ribs as the guardian’s bones visibly reset themselves.

That was when Sharidin’s eyes cleared. Huffing in pain and foaming red and white at the mouth from the arrows Selni had driven into his chest, Sharidin lurched upright. Even as the muscles reknit around his wounds, he spun and thrust his horn at Sygren’s chest. Unable to arrest his momentum, Sygren flung up his shield, deflecting the twisting spike and sending him stumbling past, right into Sharidin’s oncoming hoof. Though weakened and bloody, Sharidin had enough force behind it to not just rattle the steel scales sewn into Sygren’s armor, but tear a few loose as he threw Sygren onto his back. He landed with a whoosh of expelled air and choked for a moment as he tried to draw in a breath, face contorting in pain as he did. Sharidin’s hind legs bunched and he reared over Sygren, ready to smash down and collapse whatever was left of Sygren's chest.

Cursing, Pehril grabbed his diamond from the pouch again, raised it, and blurted the incantation, summoning a sphere of clear liquid that catapulted toward and splashed against Sharidin’s flank and haunch. The propelled mass was enough to knock Sharidin off balance, forcing him to stumble to stay upright and missing Sygren. A moment after the sphere hit, fumes began rising and the creature’s hair and hide began to bleach before the acid started eating into the flesh and muscle beneath, turning it into an inert slurry that sloughed and dripped to the grassy dirt. 

Screaming in a voice caught somewhere between horse and human, Sharidin’s muscles tensed to lunge away before the melting hip buckled and he collapsed back to the ground with the sound of more bones in his wing snapping under the immense weight. 

Hanthir continued to slash and tear at Sharidin’s legs with his one arm, avoiding the chest and neck. Pehril glimpsed Selni kneeling next to Sygren and putting one of Landelth’s berries to her cousin’s lips. “Keep him down!” Pehril glimpsed Landelth, back on his feet, pulling the rope from his belt and popping one of the berries into his mouth as he limped forward. “Buy me some time!”

Sygren unsteadily rose as Hanthir dropped his blades and jumped onto the wing he had cut apart. Snorting and twisting with the pain, Sharidin managed a single great beat that threw Hanthir off just before Sygren nearly collapsed onto Sharidin’s neck, using his weight more than his strength to try to hold his head down. Sharidin was about to whip his muscular neck and dislodge Sygren when Hanthir tackled the wing again, bending the damaged limb the wrong way and eliciting a scream of pain from Sharidin, causing him to forget Sygren for just a moment before bucking him free. 

“Break his legs!” Landelth shouted as he struggled to loop the rope around Sharidin's thrashing wings and limbs.

“What?!” Selni shouted, horrified and loosening the tension on her bow.

“Break them! He’ll heal later! Just break them so he doesn't get away!”

Sygren got up once more, recovered his hammer, and hesitated for only an instant before he brought it down with both hands. There was a sickening, near simultaneous series of pops and crunches as Sharidin’s left foreleg snapped to the side and a piece of bone tore free of his skin. Before he could scream again in his nearly-human voice, Landelth, unable to knot the rope, grabbed a fist-sized stone from the ground and slammed it into the side of Sharidin’s head, just behind his eye.

Sharidin's eyes crossed and, for a moment, he went limp. That was long enough for Landelth to tie the rope to Sharidin’s horn and begin binding it to the pegacorn’s wings in something like a reverse hogtie. By the time Sharidin was lucid enough to struggle again with any strength, he could not move his head without pulling at his wings, widening the already ragged wounds even as his magic struggled to heal them. Before the bones in his legs could reset on their own, Sygren smashed them apart again, turning parts into mere splinters and pulp, as Selni hurried to untie the ettin’s corpse and return with the other rope to bind Sharidin’s legs. With Selni and Landelth working the knots together, they had Sharidin’s legs bound in a matter of seconds.

Finally secured and only able to wiggle and lurch in his bonds, the others stepped back from the hybrid. They looked over the silvery-red blood smeared all over Sharidin, nearly coating his legs, and the torn flesh where he had been cut or where bones had erupted. As they watched, the last of the shards of bone poking from his hide were sucked back into his flesh to mend. Even flaps of skin and muscle that hung limp from his body after being sheared away slowly pulled back into their proper places. Although his muscles reknit and strengthened with every second, Sharidin still could not manage to break the sturdy cords binding him.

Trying to control his panting breath, Landelth turned and began to dry heave, his injured hip finally giving out and dropping him to his knees as he fought to keep his meal down. He succeeded for the most part, spitting out bile and small chunks that might have been a biscuit once. Pehril was queazy himself and thought that he was only doing better because he was still a good thirty feet from the brutalized creature and had never had a perfectly clear view. 

“We...” Landelth panted, wiping spittle from his mouth as he rolled into an unsteady sitting position. “We could really... have planned that... better.” His abdomen and throat contracted again, but he managed to swallow it down. 

“Yeah, but it turned out okay,” Hanthir said, forcing himself to sound chipper. Watching him, though, Pehril saw that he was experimentally prodding his face, where the horn had nearly slashed out his left eye. That seemed to have scared him enough that he did not even notice that the fingers of his left hand were dripping with blood from his wound. After wrestling Sharidin, there were patches of the overly vibrant blood smeared across his chest and arms, mingling with Hanthir’s so that it was impossible to always tell which stains and wet splotches were from whose body.

Sygren groaned, prodding at where the scales were missing from his armor, which was likewise spattered with Sharidin’s ichor. “Speak for yourself. You didn’t get your chest stoved in.”

“Yeah, but that’s what you’re good at!” Hanthir replied, finally noticing his arm and eating one of the berries. It quickly stopped the bleeding, even if it did not mend the torn skin and left the gash exposed. “Taking all of the heavy hits for us! It’s really very nice of you, Sygren. You’re such a good and generous person. Olidamma would be proud.”

“Olidammara,” Sygren corrected.

“Oh, right. Sorry. Olidammada would be so proud.”

“Olidammara!” Sygren growled.

“Oliloloiloa is probably smiling upon you now!”

Sygren groaned again, shuffling away and lowering himself to the ground to lean his back against a fallen pine. “You got hit too, though,” he pointed at Hanthir’s nearly lame arm. “Why didn’t you use that extra armor or make yourself blurry?”

“Didn't really have time. Thought he might have heard the spell and bolted while blindfolded, so I wanted to wait for the fighting to start, but I saw an opening I didn’t want to miss.” 

“That was reckless.”

Hanthir grinned. “Yup!”

Pehril wasn’t entirely sure what they were talking about. He tentatively stepped closer to Sharidin’s restless form. Even the stray leopard reappeared to sniff at Sharidin, though he likewise refused to get too close. The pegacorn was producing an endless stream of nonsense as Selni’s arrows gradually pushed free of his body before dropping to the ground. Even the severed wingtip was beginning to sprout a replacement for the useless piece that dangled from the end.

Quelling another wave of squeamishness, Pehril asked “Now what?”

“We have to keep him awake until we can bring help,” Landelth answered. “Otherwise, if he gets enough rest like you said, he can just disappear again like he did before.”

“But are we going to keep him here?” Pehril asked, gesturing to the open space. “Seems kind of vulnerable.”

Landelth paused. “Fuck.” He let himself flop back to the ground, missing the wet spot he had left nearby. “We didn't think this far ahead, I guess.”

“To be fair to us,” Hanthir put in, “we didn’t really think this would work in the first place.”

“Part of me wishes it hadn’t,” Selni murmured, still watching the mad guardian of the forest. Though his wounds were mostly closed now and his wing was nearly regrown and sprouting downy feathers, having shunted off the dead part to the ground, he was still caked in his own drying blood.

“Wasn’t my first choice either.” Landelth grimaced, staring at the sky as he took deep breaths and felt at his hip.

“So is there anywhere nearby we can take him?” Sygren asked from his seat, eating another berry. “A cave or something?”

Landelth’s grimace turned into an expression of frustration and despair. “The nearest place I can think of is less than a half mile away, but we'll never get him there.”

“Why not?” Sygren asked.

“Uh, look at him.” Selni gestured to the form on the ground. “That’s bigger than any horse I ever saw and I don't think all of us together could carry even a normal horse for a half mile. He’d probably break any kind of sled we made for him too.”

“Are you calling me fat?!” Sharidin shouted in indignation. They ignored him.

Pehril examined the creature. With his magic, he could carry almost five hundred pounds, but even with that and the others hauling, he doubted that they would be able to lift him even for a few seconds. Sharidin’s constant struggling in addition would render the task impossible.

“So we bring help here,” Hanthir said, repeating Landelth’s suggestion. “And whoever stays behind has to keep him awake.”

“Took us two days to get here,” Pehril pointed out. “Does that mean whoever gets stuck with the insane horse will have to wait four days for help to arrive?”

“We kind of wound through the forest a bit,” Landelth noted. “At a quick pace without breaks, we could get back to Fandír in… a day? I’m guessing it would take a bit longer on the way back with others in tow, but if I left now, I could probably be back some time tomorrow night or early the next morning. Depends how quickly I can get the wizards to move and if they know how to ride horses.”

“Might be a good idea for me to go too, then,” Pehril volunteered. He saw a chance to leave this forest, at least for a little while, and was too eager to let it pass. “I might be able to expedite things with the university and my master while you can talk to the town guard, if you need to.”

Landelth nodded. “Couldn’t hurt to have some extra soldiers with us in case more monsters show up.”

“And what if more monsters ‘show up’ while you’re gone?” Sygren demanded. “We supposed to fight them off to our last breath?”

Landelth looked a little taken aback. “Who said anything about you dying over this? If you're overwhelmed, just run. It'd be good to cut Sharidin free before you did, but going back to town in the first place is pointless if all of you and he get eaten.”

“Yeah, I’m not a big fan of being eaten,” Selni nodded, “but we’ve already done this much. Might as well wait.”

“For at least two whole days?” Sygren asked. “Even if something else doesn't try to kill us, we’re going to get bored to all nine hells.”

“Sygren,” Hanthir looked at his cousin, incredulous. “A whole city might be depending on this. You wanted to show them we were trustworthy, right?” Sygren continued to grumble, but didn’t argue further.

“To make this go as quickly as possible,” Landelth continued, “would you mind healing me some, Sygren? I’d run a lot faster without all these bruises and I think something in my hip is still cracked, maybe fractured.”

“Last time I used healing, my whole side turned into motley.”

“Well, we haven’t noticed any side effects from the goodberries we ate.”

“Yet.” Sygren leveled an even, serious gaze at Landelth. “What if I did something worse to myself that I don't know about? Could’ve given myself some disease or crippled my liver or, I don’t know. Anything else.” 

That gave Landelth pause. “Well, I’m going to be limping if I don't get some form of healing. If the berries are our best bet, anyone mind handing me one or two? Just want to be able to run again and eating these will let us leave behind our food rations. Can travel lighter.” Selni was happy to contribute hers since she was uninjured and her brother and cousin would need what little benefit the magical fruit could provide. When Pehril offered, though, Landelth told him to keep his berry for breakfast. 

“It’s gonna be a long hike.”


End file.
